


sleight of hand & twist of fate

by derekmaliknurse



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: A lot of alternate universes, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fairytale, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Alternate Universe - Victorian, F/M, Female Spike (BtVS), Human Spike (BtVS), Minor Angel/Cordelia Chase, Minor Buffy Summers/Cordelia Chase, Minor Buffy Summers/Faith Lehane, Minor Spike/Buffy Summers/Faith Lehane, Minor Willow Rosenberg/Faith Lehane, Multiverse, Slayer Cordelia Chase, Vampire Cordelia Chase, seriously so many alternate universes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:54:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26151451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/derekmaliknurse/pseuds/derekmaliknurse
Summary: It's just Buffy's luck, really, that as soon as she reunites with Spike, they get thrown into a series of alternate universes with the Scoobies along for the ride.
Relationships: Spike/Buffy Summers
Comments: 9
Kudos: 59





	sleight of hand & twist of fate

**Author's Note:**

> yeah i'm totally over buffy why do you ask  
> potential title that i convinced myself not to use: Into the Buffy-verse. real title is from [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UD0KV07Jjg), which was on repeat the whole time i was writing this, along with would that i by hozier, i found by amber run, believe by the score, time for dancing by ben howard, monster in me by little mix, and pink in the night by mitski. all quintessential spuffy songs in my humble opinion.  
> this goes au post-chosen, ignoring the comics, and proceeds in an au angel s5 where cordelia wakes up from her coma and fucks some shit up. in the ats timeline we're at 5x08 destiny, but you can probably get by without having seen any of angel, or without having seen it in a while. also on elysian fields under the user bisexualbuffy if you’d rather read there!

**I.**

She was dreaming again.

Dreaming of him.

In her dreams he always smelled of fire and cigarettes. They were on the back porch of 1630 Revello Drive, sitting inches or miles away from each other, and the moon made him look like the beautiful and awful creature he was, silver and shining impossibly bright. He was covered in bruises until she turned and leaned in to kiss him, golden hair falling to cover them both like a silk curtain of privacy. He was burning up from the inside and only she could see when he said, like he was reciting a poem, “I’ll make it quick, won’t hurt a bit.”

Buffy heard her own voice as if it was very far away. She was smiling when she said it, gentle, though she hadn’t been the first time. “No, Spike. It’s going to hurt a lot.”

“How long was I gone?” Spike said, an echo, a missed beat in the conversation.

“You’re still gone.”

“Haven’t been for a while,” he told her, one hand reaching out to touch her cheek, clumsily like the first time he tried to comfort her. “Open your eyes, love, why won’t you.”

Her eyes snapped open, and when she sat up she was panting like she’d gone up against three hellgods at the same time, breath shuddering and skin clammy. Buffy tossed her covers aside roughly and ran a trembling hand through her hair and over her face, taking in a shaky breath.

She was too hot, itchy and unsettled, but awareness was beginning to settle in, the realization of where she was and where she would never be again. The room was cold, drafty, and Dawn’s snores were drifting in from the next room, Xander’s in the one over. Hers was at the end of the hall, with Dawn, Xander, Willow, and Giles next to her, all in a neat line so that she could go to sleep knowing they were here and alive.

She closed her eyes and listened, hands still in her hair: blustery November wind blowing in from her half-cracked open window, the old grandfather clock on the wall ticking away softly – not even four in the morning yet –, and someone’s footsteps creaking outside her door – one of the new Watchers, probably, at least two of them were always awake at an ungodly hour. Dozens of Slayers sleeping on the second floor, their laughter and whispers having fallen silent at around midnight.

And the rain was falling lightly outside the way it always did in London.

She wondered if Spike had ever lost patience with the rain the way Xander always did now, grumbling about umbrellas and California. She’d never asked him. Never asked him much of anything important, anything about himself, really. And she’d never get the chance.

_Haven’t been for a while._

He was. He was gone, he was.

“He’s gone,” Buffy told herself firmly, to quiet the hope inside her head saying _what if_?

 _I thought you believed in him_ , that same hope said, and Buffy closed her eyes.

He wasn’t going to come back from the dead, though it wouldn’t be the first time. And she wouldn’t want him to anyway. Knows what it could be like for him. Knows he made his sacrifice for a reason, that he’s finished.

_You thought you were finished._

Was it selfish to want him back anyway?

Talking to herself probably seemed like she was making with the crazy. She just had to remind herself sometimes, to keep from thinking she was having prophetic Slayer dreams instead of normal nightmares about him, and from looking at the swish of long black dusters and out the window for her champion to return. She used to depend on it, his coming back, because he always did. It was one of the facts of Life With Buffy. She couldn’t count on her world staying normal and she couldn’t count on anyone else to be strong enough and still _stay_ , but even when she wanted him to fuck off, she could count on him. Till the end of the world, even if that had happened to be only a year ago for him.

Buffy took her hands out of her hair, and clenched them tightly against her sheets to stop the crawling feeling on her skin to _go,_ run, fight.

She gave it up as a lost cause.

She was changing into cargo pants and a black tank top within minutes, shrugging on a sweater and then one of Giles’s warm, waterproof, too-big coats, pulling on an old pair of boots and grabbing a handful of stakes. Plus Mr. Pointy – the last weapon from Sunnydale, besides the scythe, that she still had. Buffy never left it behind anymore.

The easy escape route of her open window was another reason she’d liked this room. She was swinging out of the room in a matter of seconds, landing on the wet grass outside of the new Watcher headquarters: a sprawling mansion on the end of one street, cloaked with one of Wil’s spells so that no one ever cast it a glance other than the various Slayers, Watchers, witches, ex-magical blobs of energy, and humans that lived there.

London was pretty dull on the vamp front compared to the good old Hell of Mouth that Buffy hailed from, but what with the lack of usual sunshine and the vast network of tunnels and sewers available to them, there were still enough of them to keep her busy. All the creepy crawlies and nasties in Sunnydale would have stayed inside in the rain, but here they roamed free in the worst downpours, so there would be no reprieve for them now. She spared a moment of wistfulness for the demons of Sunnydale, who had either been too smart to get in her way or too stupid not to.

She walked to the closest cemetery, path known by heart, which was probably depressing. The rain was light enough to feel like a faint shower, glistening in her hair, her hand clasping a stake tightly.

Buffy spotted a hand shooting up from a grave and smiled.

It wasn’t a nice smile. It was the kind of smile she would have hidden from Riley, from her friends, from Dawn, from Giles, from her mother.

_Impressive hunt._

By the time she was done, hours later, she’d gone through ten graveyards and dusted nineteen vamps, and felt loose and easy and satisfied. Buffy climbed back in her room, closing the window quietly. She peeled off the clothes sticking to her rain and sweat-stained skin, throwing them in a corner to deal with later, before finally collapsing in bed in her underwear, pulling the covers over her head.

This was the only way she knew how to sleep soundly, nowadays.

She was jolted out of sleep what felt like moments later by the shrill sound of her phone ringing over and over again. Pulling the covers down an inch and squinting blearily up at the too-bright ceiling, she lifted her arm over and caught a glimpse of the contact name _Angel_ before sighing loudly and answering just in case it was an apocalypse or something. Timing was totally off, though, it wasn’t May yet.

“Hello,” Buffy said with her voice coming out like a croak, pressing the phone to her ear. She yawned into the covers and looked around – light flooding into her room, so it must have been morning, and the sound of everyone in the house’s usual early bustle, Dawn’s laughter and the clatter of doors closing.

“Buffy!”

Buffy screwed her eyes up at her phone, suddenly a lot more awake. “Cordelia? Don’t take this the wrong way but...aren’t you dead?”

“Aren’t you?” Cordelia’s voice, irritated, retorted. “And please, I was in a _coma_ – whatever. I woke up. This is _important_ , you know.”

“Okay, okay,” Buffy said, sitting up and rubbing her free hand over her face. “What’s wrong? Is it Angel?”

The line went silent.

“Hel- _lo_. Cordelia?” Buffy said, annoyed. Not that she wasn’t glad to hear from Cordelia – once a Scooby, always a Scooby, and they’d been friends, once. Always would be, in a way.

“It’s hard to explain,” Cordelia protested. “There’s something going on here. A spell. Lots of freaky stuff, and I don’t trust Wolfram & Hart as far as I could throw them, which is considerably less than you could, and Giles apparently doesn’t trust any of us anymore – ”

“Gee, I wonder why,” Buffy said, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Couldn’t be because you all joined the evilest supernatural law firm in the world.”

“It wasn’t _my_ decision,” Cordelia said. She sounded tired, uncertain, and it made Buffy soften by a fraction. “There were reasons and – I need your help, alright?”

“Just me.”

“No, you and Willow,” Cordelia said. “But you might as well bring the whole gang.”

“Why?” Buffy asked, already getting out of bed and surveying her unfortunate pile of clothes from last night with dismay.

“Because,” said Cordelia, “there’s something in L.A. you’d better get your ass over here to see.”

“Yeah?” Buffy said. “And what would that be?”

“I don’t think you’d believe me,” Cordelia said, voice quiet and serious, and hung up.

▬▬▬▬▬▬

Buffy gathered the troops in the kitchen, the second-biggest room in the mansion, and not exactly Scooby Central, but she wasn’t a fan of the meeting rooms and the bureaucracy they always brought to mind. Besides, she was starving.

She shooed the other Watchers and Slayers out until it was only Xander, eating bacon, and Giles, drinking tea, and Dawn, studying an ancient book of languages over her pop tart at the long wooden table, while Willow made pancakes at the stove.

“I thought Cordelia was dead,” Willow said, flipping over a pancake.

“She was in a coma,” Buffy said, swinging her legs back and forth on the kitchen counter and accepting Willow’s proffered plate of pancakes.

“But she’s alright now?” Xander pressed, looking anxious.

“I think so,” said Buffy. “She hung up before I really got a chance to ask. And wouldn’t answer when I tried to call her again. It was weird. Super with the cryptic-ness and also the unhelpfulness.”

“I would advise against going to L.A., Buffy,” Giles said, setting his tea down on the table. “That they have aligned themselves with Wolfram & Hart is – ”

“Cordelia didn’t approve of them, trust me,” Buffy said dismissively, shoveling a mouthful of pancakes and syrup in her mouth. “She said it was important. I think we’d better check it out.”

She didn’t say how relieved it made her, to have a solid problem to work with, a mystery to solve.

“Besides,” Dawn said, looking up, “she’s out of a coma. We should see her, right? See how she’s doing?”

“Historically people coming out of comas...have not been good for us,” Xander pointed out.

“Right,” Dawn said, making a face. “Still, it’s not like Cordelia was ever super evil. Right?” At the look on Willow and Xander’s faces, she rolled her eyes. “I mean, she came to Buffy’s funeral.”

“She did?” Buffy asked, intrigued. “I didn’t know you guys had a funeral.”

Willow winced. “Yeah, Dawn and Giles thought we should have one, but that was – ”

“Oh, yeah,” interrupted Dawn. “It was really tense. We couldn’t find Riley, but Oz came, and Cordelia and Wesley came with Angel. She helped me calm down Angel when he almost got into this huge fistfight with, um – ” She trailed off, wearing the look of guilt Buffy associated with burrowed clothing and sneaking out at night and shoplifting.

 _Oh_ , Buffy thought, heart sinking.

“Anyways,” Willow said hastily, “um, I guess we’ll both be heading to L.A., huh, Buffy? Buffy?”

“Buffy,” Giles urged, “if Cordelia has been asleep for this long, what makes you think that really was her?”

I need your help, Cordelia had said.

“If it’s not, all the more reason for me to go,” Buffy said, voice even.

Giles held her gaze, like he was remembering a door closing in his face. “Alright,” he said quietly. “I shall get the plane tickets for tomorrow. Just you and Willow then?”

Buffy nodded. “I need you here to hold down the fort, take care of the Slayers. Dawn, you’ve got classes – ”

“Uh, no I don’t,” Dawn said. “I mean, not tomorrow. Today’s Friday.”

Buffy’s mind briefly went blank. “Oh. Right. I knew that.”

“I can come with you,” Dawn said eagerly. “Come on, I miss California.”

“Hey, I want to come too,” objected Xander. “No rain, my three favorite girls, the potential of super awkwardness with my ex who I cheated on back out of a coma, freaky weird magic stuff, danger and wacky hijinks?” He looked around the kitchen, one eyebrow raised. “Sounds like a party to me.”

▬▬▬▬▬▬

The night before they were meant to leave, Buffy couldn’t sleep. She thought about going out to patrol and made her way down the spiraling stone stairs instead, to the kitchen to make hot chocolate, and carried it out into the sitting room to curl up on an armchair. It never tasted like her mom’s had. Spike had been crazy over that hot chocolate, and her mom oddly endeared by it. For a moment she wanted so bad for her mom to tell her what she was doing wrong, hug her, tell her she was doing alright.

Everyone else seemed to have found a purpose, a new beginning, seemed to be happy now, but she –

She really, really missed him.

And she didn’t know what she was doing anymore. Sure, she trained the Slayers that were here, and called Faith and Robin now and then for updates on their Slayers. But Kennedy was better at it than her. Buffy’d had years to get used to fighting alone, and when she wasn’t alone, she’d got used to fighting with a vampire by her side. Sometimes she thought Spike was guarding her left when he – The rest of the Slayers seemed like they saw her more as a mythic hero than a teacher, anyway.

But she’d gotten a job, though she didn’t really need one anymore. One of those endless negotiations in the meeting rooms with the Watchers left from around the world had resulted in wages for all Slayers over the age of eighteen with no other steady income, and her and Faith especially had all sorts of benefits that the Watchers’ Council hadn’t seen fit to give them before.

Still, she’d taken Dawn figure skating one day, and one of the coaches had asked if she’d ever had any experience, and before she knew it she was coming back for a job interview and teaching kids how to skate on Mondays to Thursdays. She could fit it around slaying, even though she didn’t need to anymore.

She would have liked to be a counselor again. What with her only previous background being in a giant pit, her reference being an ex-Principal who didn’t exist on the internet, and there being absolutely no way she could ever take Psychology again (thanks a lot, Maggie Walsh), she didn’t see it happening.

Maybe she should go back to college. See if they had any poetry classes with haikus. Her mom had always wanted –

Buffy yawned and set her cup down on the floor. She meant to get up, really, but her eyes were falling shut, and Spike was there, she could still remember everything about the way he looked at her, she hadn’t forgotten, his head tilted in the crypt and his eyes soft –

She startled awake, head full of dreams where she was dancing at the Bronze with Tara and Anya and Spike, and walking through the hallways of Sunnydale High with Xander and Willow and Cordelia. Someone had put a blanket over her and picked up the cup, straightened her head where it had been falling off the edge of the armchair.

She looked around. Giles, his legs crossed, was in the chair across from her, reading the morning paper.

It must have been him who’d put the blanket over her. She was unexpectedly touched, wanted for a second to run over and hug him like she was seventeen years old again, make a stupid joke so he would smile at her.

“Good morning,” Giles said.

“Morning,” Buffy said, stretching her arms out and smiling at him. “I didn’t sleep in, did I?”

Giles shook his head. “It’s only nine.”

“I’d better go see if Cordelia’s picking up now,” Buffy said, standing up and folding the blanket into a slightly uneven square. She’d never really got the hang of the whole folding thing.

She went up to her room to take a quick shower, brush her teeth, and wash her face. She dialled Cordelia’s number while towelling her hair, and this time she got an answer.

“Buffy,” Cordelia said, out of breath. There was a loud crash in the background, and multiple someones arguing fiercely over each other.

Buffy’s plans to ask Cordelia why the hell she’d given a super vague message and not answered Buffy’s calls went up in a cloud of smoke. “Um, is everything okay?”

“Huh? Oh. Yeah,” Cordelia said over the sound of more screaming. “I mean, no, but – you’re coming, right?”

“Yeah. We’ll get there tomorrow, in the morning. I’m guessing you guys aren’t staying at the Hyperion anymore?”

“Actually, I’m there right now, along with – uh, no one at Wolfram & Hart is here, anyway, and it’s empty, so. You can all come straight there. Wait for me in front of the hotel.”

“What?” Buffy frowned. “Why?”

“Look, I’ve gotta go – ouch – hey, that’s my _shirt_! – sorry, I’ll call you back.”

“Hold on a second!” Buffy said indignantly. “Can you be more specific, as in, what the hell do you need us to do and what the hell is going on?”

“You kinda have to see it to believe it?” said Cordelia. “Come quick. And tell Willow to bring all the lesbian witch stuff she’s got. Cause we’re gonna need it.”

**II.**

Buffy stood outside the Hyperion Hotel in black sunglasses and a black sundress with little red cherries on it. Dawn was next to her popping gum and wearing a hat over her chestnut-brown hair, glinting gold in the sunlight; Willow beside Dawn holding the suitcase with their things in it, and Xander looking faintly sick beside Willow.

“I really missed the sun,” Willow said, sighing, and they all took a moment to bask in the California winter, the equivalent to a London summer, before continuing to stare at the hotel.

“Well,” said Buffy, finally, tucking away her sunglasses. “Here goes nothing.”

None of them moved.

“I think we’re out of practice,” Dawn reflected.

Buffy waved her off. “Please, it’s like riding a bike. Look, you guys stay here, call Cordelia again. I’ll stake out the hotel, look around to see what it is we’re walking into before we actually walk into it.”

“Aye, aye, captain,” Xander said, before pressing a hand to his eye and adding, “Aaandd I forgot why I can’t ever make any pirate jokes again.”

Buffy went forward, walking around the hotel and to the side alley, bright green trees blocking her view of the sun. She moved on, searching for a back entrance, and the back of her neck started to tingle, like something familiar was in this alley with her. Buffy whipped around, hair swishing, and saw nothing behind her. She turned back, frowning.

There was a vampire standing in the shade at the end of the alley, leaning against the wall of the hotel and lighting up a cigarette.

Black leather duster, red overshirt, black T-shirt, skin-tight jeans. A bleached-blonde head of curls slicked back but sprung up into little coils. Doc Martens.

Buffy went perfectly still, feeling her heart hammer against her chest, her nails clenching into her hands, leaving half-moon circles in their wake.

No.

The vampire took a long drag of his cigarette before stubbing it out on the ground, and pushed himself off the wall, hands in the pockets of his duster, looking around.

He saw her. And he was looking at her, head tilted, eyes in awe, mouth half parted on her name.

It wasn’t him, Buffy thought, it wasn’t him, couldn’t be him. Was she dreaming? She must have been dreaming – She pinched her nails in harder against her palms. Still there.

Buffy didn’t even remember deciding to run until she already was, sprinting as fast as she could to the end of the alley, faster than any normal human being could run. Every time her heart thudded against her chest she thought _it’s not him_ even though it tasted like a lie: _it’s not him it’s someone else it’s the First it’s a hallucination it’s a dream it’s the First it’s not him._

She was going too fast to slow down in time, leaped into his arms, thinking _if it’s him he’ll catch me_.

He caught her. One hand on her back and one hand against her hair, her name a whispered exhale, _Buffy_.

She inhaled once, smelled smoke and threw her arms around him, and breathed in shakily.

Spike – _Spike_ – didn’t hesitate either. He folded his arms around her neck and pressed his face against her shoulder like this was something they’ve done a million times before. This was a hug. She’d never hugged Spike before.

 _Buffy,_ again into her hair, arms tight around her, shuddering against her.

Buffy’s eyes stung. She put two hands against his face, pulled his mouth to hers in a bruising, harsh kiss, the kind of kiss she’d missed giving to him. Hands making their way into his hair and nose nudging against his, and she felt Spike spin her around in the alley, smiling against her mouth. She kissed him again, feather-light like that first time in the crypt, tasted salt water on his lips and realized she was crying.

“I’m going to kill you,” Buffy said.

“Good way to go, I’d reckon,” Spike said, sounding breathless. He reached up one shaking hand to wipe away a tear on her cheek, with that same puzzled expression he’d worn the first time he’d seen her cry. “Don’t cry, love.”

“Don’t cry?” Buffy repeated, voice coming out hoarse and choked. “Don’t – you’re – you were _dead._ You were dead, you’re _dead_.”

“Well, yeah,” Spike said, thumbing her cheek gently. “It’s kind of complicated.”

“Yeah,” Cordelia drawled from behind them, standing with an awkward-looking Xander, Willow, and Dawn. “Really complicated.”

Buffy winced, feeling herself blush and trying not to groan, really wishing a hole would swallow her and Spike up right about now. She jerked her head towards them and raised her eyebrows at Spike: _How long have they been here?_

Spike’s mouth tilted up, and he shook his head by a fraction: _Just came around now._

Oh, God, it felt good to be able to talk to him without even having to talk to him, to have someone understand her in a matter of seconds. This, she’d missed this. The feeling of being on steady ground. Spike had her back. No qualms about saying it. Belief in her, belief in him. The truth of his being back hit her all over again with dizzying relief. Part of her couldn’t help thinking, _I knew it, I knew._

She slid down and turned to face her friends, grabbing hold of Spike’s wrist because she was scared if she let go he would vanish, and pulling him over.

Willow and Xander were still staring fixedly at Spike and the place where her hand held his wrist, looking baffled. Dawn’s eyes were bright with tears, jaw set. Buffy didn’t know how to address any of it, especially since she still wasn’t sure if this was real.

“Hey, Cordelia,” she said, and had absolutely no idea what to do next. A hug? She and Cordelia had really never been the hugging type, but then, neither had she and Spike. And Cordelia had been the one to bring Buffy to L.A., to Spike, though she’d also completely left that part out.

Cordelia was thinner than she remembered, clothes hanging off her skin like Buffy’s had when she’d come back from the dead. Her face was wearier, dark circles under her eyes, and her hair was cropped short. All of a sudden it was easy to reach over and give her a brief hug.

Cordelia gave her a tight smile, but before she could say anything, Xander suddenly burst out with, “Spike! How is Spike here?”

“Nice to see you too, Harris,” Spike said, but she could see from the tilt of his mouth that he was trying not to smile, and he was happy to see them all. He nodded at Willow and said, “Niblet,” to Dawn, with a careful and fragile expression on his face, fingers twitching like he wanted to touch her hair.

“Hi, Spike,” Willow said, a bit awkward, but looking glad to see him. “Thanks for saving the world and all. Um, how was dying?”

“Didn’t get much of a chance to find out,” Spike groused.

Cordelia put up her hands. “Not to break up this whole reunion, or anything, but we’ve kinda got places to be. Spike, you were supposed to stay inside.”

“Just wanted a bit of a break!” Spike said, indignant. “I didn’t know you’d asked B – Buffy – ” His voice stumbled over her name, as though it was something precious. “And the whole bleeding Scooby gang over here, did I? No one fills me in on anything!”

Cordelia made a face. “Sorry. I convinced Angel she could come and I was going to tell everyone in the lobby when she actually did.”

“You should have told me about Spike,” Buffy said, voice faltering on the last word. “You should have – ” She turned around to give Spike’s – very solid, very nice – chest a shove. “ _You_ should have told me. How long have you – ” _How could you not tell me?_ she wanted to ask. _You, you of all people?_

“Nineteen days after he died,” Cordelia cut in, “he came back as a non-corporeal being in Angel’s office. He couldn’t touch anything for a while there, didn’t know where he’d been. Wes said his essence must have been inside the amulet.”

“Nineteen days,” Buffy echoed flatly. “I spend months mourning after the guy I think died and it turns out, oh no, he’s been alive the whole time, he just didn’t want to tell me!”

“I wanted to tell you,” said Spike, and then, “Mourning?”

He really hadn’t thought she’d care. He’d thought she’d move on in a matter of minutes.

He really hadn’t believed her.

She let go of his wrist.

“He couldn’t leave L.A.,” Cordelia said hastily. “He was tied here. He’s been helping Angel and the rest of us.”

“And Angel didn’t think I should _know_ about any of this?” Buffy demanded.

Cordelia’s expression told her that no, he really didn’t.

“Well, Spike’s all with the corporeal-being now,” Willow interjected. “What happened there?”

“I’m getting there,” Cordelia said, rolling her eyes. “If you all want to have this conversation here – ” She gave an elaborate sweep of her hands around their admittedly not-so glamorous surroundings. “Fine. Look, Spike ends up alive in Angel’s office without being able to touch anything or leave, right? So he’s annoying Angel, working with the rest of the gang, and he visits me in the hospital.”

“Why does he do that?” Xander asked suspiciously.

“Heard a lot about her, haven’t I,” said Spike. “Got a bit curious about this coma bird.”

Buffy had a sudden image of Spike and Faith hanging out in her last year of high school before everything had gone up in flames. She remembered how cozy they’d looked in that basement, Faith leaning in close, sharing a cigarette, Spike with his arms lazily locked over his knees, shirtless in his pyjama bottoms, smiling. She scowled.

“Well, Angel followed him there, and they were arguing,” Cordelia said, “and I – ” She hesitated. “I woke up.”

Buffy thought there was a bit more to the story than that, but she didn’t press. “So,” she said, “what’s the sitch?”

“A couple months later, I was with Harmony when she got a package for Spike and another package for Angel – ”

“Sorry, did you just say _Harmony_?” Willow said incredulously.

“She works for Angel,” Cordelia said, glowering at all of them as though they were going to immediately march in and stake Harmony, which was fair, actually, seeing as that had been Buffy’s basic plan. “And she’s good now!”

Buffy looked at Dawn, Willow, and Xander, and swallowed down her hysterical laughter. She nodded at Cordelia to go on seriously.

“Anyway, all the phones start ringing, and Harmony goes to answer hers, while I stay in the office, and Spike heads there. He finds out he’s corporeal again, so it must have been his package. I don’t know if it was Wolfram & Hart who sent it, because I started opening the second package. Only Spike wanted to see what it was, so we were both fighting over it, and – ” Cordelia swallowed and offered up an I’m-not-guilty-at-all smile. “We released something. Someone. Several someones. Harmony created a distraction so that we could get out with them, and she’s covering for us right now, while Angel claims we’re on vacation, because there’s no telling what Wolfram & Hart would do if they got their hands on this.”

Willow asked, “What kind of someones?”

Cordelia looked grim. “Us.”

▬▬▬▬▬▬

“Alright, the important thing to remember is to _not panic_ ,” Cordelia said, leading the way into the hotel, with Dawn, Buffy, and Spike behind her and Willow and Xander at the end. Dawn, Willow, and Xander kept giving Buffy little looks that summed up to _what the fuck_. She didn’t know how to answer.

The lobby of the Hyperion was a mess: stuffing pulled out of couches and underwear hanging off the chandelier and what looked alarmingly like blood on the floor.

“Gee, I love what you’ve done with the place,” Xander said. Dawn snorted.

A green-skinned demon was collapsed on the sofa in the center of the room, next to a girl with doe eyes and long, curly brown hair, and Wesley with a lot more stubble. In front of them on the floor was a circle of –

“Spikes and Cordelias!” Cordelia said loudly, clapping her hands together, and the people in the circle turned to look at her.

“Oh...my God,” Buffy said, staring. Willow, Xander, and Dawn stood with their mouths open next to her, looking flabbergasted.

“Alternate universes,” grumbled Spike. “We both touched the package and they all started coming out of it, only stopped when we let go of it.”

“Oh my God,” Buffy said again, as all the Spikes and Cordelias looked at them curiously.

“So all of them are from alternate universes?” Willow asked, giving the girl with brown hair, who smiled at her, a cheery wave.

“Like the world without shrimp and the world with nothing but shrimp and the world where Jonathan was a famous superhero and I was his two-bit dumb blonde sidekick?” Buffy said, still staring.

“Ooh,” Willow cut in, “or like that one world where I was a skanky gay vampire?”

“What?” Cordelia said. “But yeah.”

“Cool,” Dawn said, looking impressed. “I read that about that in – ”

“Buffy!” said a Spike with curly brown hair and a black leather jacket, his face lighting up. He stood up and started to rush towards her, wearing a silly grin, until Real Spike took a step forward and pushed him back firmly.

“She’s not your Buffy, you wanker,” he snarled.

“Oh,” said Brown-Haired Spike, his expression falling. He saw Dawn, Xander, and Willow, and immediately brightened again. “Are they – ”

“No,” Spike snapped.

“This is Watcher Spike,” Cordelia explained. “Spike keeps calling him Randy.”

“This is what?” Buffy said, almost choking.

“Huh?” said Xander, backing away a bit from Watcher Spike, who kept smiling at him pleasantly like they were friends.

“He’s your watcher,” Cordelia said.

Buffy shook her head. “That’s impossible.”

“I suppose I’m a vampire in most worlds,” said Randy, voice softer than she was used to, but the look in his eyes the same as it always was when he saw her. He was unmistakably Spike, looked a bit younger than Spike did. She wanted to reach out and touch his hair, so that his face would shine again. “In my world, I was the youngest graduate from the Watchers’ Academy, and they stationed me in Sunnydale, and assigned me to you when you came there.”

Buffy gaped at him.

“He’s human. Born a century later somehow,” Spike said, glaring and crossing his arms. “Stupid tosser.”

“Most of them aren’t,” Cordelia said. “Some of them are dangerous. A vampire Cordelia, a Spike who never got chipped. We’ve got Gunn and Faith looking after them upstairs, and Lorne just came down.”

“ _Faith?_ ” Buffy repeated. “Jeez, it really is a party here. What’s she doing in L.A.?”

“Came to see me after I woke up,” said Cordelia, “and ended up staying after this whole mess.”

“I told you, Cordy,” Angel’s voice said, fondly exasperated, coming from the stairs, “we can’t let you outside.”

All of them looked up at the stairs, where Angel was coming downstairs with a Cordelia following him – with long, glossy dark hair and perfect makeup and a fashionable dress, like the Cordelia Buffy had known.

“I’ve got to check on Dawn,” the new Cordelia protested.

“ _What_ did she just say,” Buffy said, voice faint.

“That’s the Slayer Cordelia,” Spike said. “We’ve been calling her Chase. Gets a bit confusing with all of them.”

Xander made a choked noise. “Sorry, the _what_?”

“She was Called in 1996,” Cordelia said, looking incredibly uncomfortable, “instead of, well, you, Buffy.”

“And what do I do?”

Cordelia shook her head. “I think you must have stayed in L.A. You were never Called.”

“So Dawn is...her sister,” said Buffy, reaching out to grab Dawn’s hand in some way to reassure herself that this was _her_ sister, her family. “That’s...I think I need to sit down.”

While they’d been looking at Chase, the rest of the Spikes and Cordelias had all gotten up and were milling around, arguing with each other, while Wesley and the others tried to calm them all down.

“Excuse me,” a suit-clad, spectacles-wearing Spike with sandy hair tumbling over his forehead said politely, coming up to Cordelia with...well, with another Cordelia, this one holding onto the crook of his elbow and wearing a UC Sunnydale sweatshirt. “The young lady has been inquiring for a drink of water?”

Buffy stared at Giles Lite and faintly heard Spike’s voice drawling out in the Bronze, filthy, tongue running over his teeth: _What can I tell you, baby? I’ve always been bad._

“Not you!” Spike said at the same time that Cordelia said, “Oh, not _her._ ”

The new, new Cordelia spotted Buffy and smiled dazzlingly, and said, “Buffy!”

“What,” Buffy managed to squeak out.

“This is your dearest friend?” asked the new Spike, smiling fondly at New, New Cordelia, but averting his gaze from Buffy and looking embarrassed. “She does not seem to be properly attired, it is most inappropriate, but I am glad she has come for you.”

“Oh, shut it, William, you poncy sod,” Spike snapped, glowering at the new Spike.

“This Cordelia’s in love with Buffy,” Real Cordelia said miserably. “Water’s in the kitchen, William.”

“ _What_ ,” Buffy said again, staring at UC Sunnydale Cordelia, whose expression was now crestfallen.

“Buffy!” a girl’s voice said.

“Oh, not again, for the love of – ” Spike muttered. “She’s not your Buffy, Willa.”

“Willa?” echoed Buffy, and looked up to see the owner of the voice: skin-tight black jeans, a black leather duster, long bleached-blonde curls falling down the shoulders of a black T-shirt...oh. Wow.

“Pretty marvellous rack, if I do say so myself,” Spike said.

“You’re a pig, Spike,” said Buffy absently, punching against his shoulder and leaving her hand there for a few moments before making herself let go. “And you’re also apparently...a girl in another universe.”

Xander, gaping, said, “Is that really…”

“Damn,” Willow said, appreciative, and when Buffy whipped her head around to stare at her accusingly, “Just saying!”

Girl Spike scowled. “Not my Buffy? The fuck is that supposed to mean? Where’s mine, then?”

“In your own world,” Spike said, crossing his arms.

“Take me there then!” Willa said.

“We’re _trying_ ,” Cordelia interjected, pushing her away. “God, all the Spikes are so rude.”

“’Cept for him,” said Spike sullenly, nudging his head roughly at William, who was listening to UC Sunnydale Cordelia talk intently.

“They’re all mostly in love with Buffy,” Xander said, staring after Willa with his head tilted. “Some things never change.”

Buffy twisted her mouth away from a smile.

“So that Spike is…?” Dawn began.

“Of the feminine persuasion,” confirmed Spike. “’Parently in her world, she killed the doc so Buffy never had to jump into the portal. Lucky bitch. They’re apparently.” He coughed. “Some sort of item.”

“Ah-hahaha,” Xander said hysterically, and Willow turned to look at Buffy with her eyebrows raised.

“Not the point!” said Buffy, though she was kind of wondering more about this anyway, and might’ve been about to ask Willa back in order to find out some more details, when someone pushed past all of them and headed straight for Dawn.

“Spike?” said Dawn, perplexed.

“Good, you’re okay,” the new Spike said, taking Dawn from her shoulders and examining her, smiling and smoothing down her hair. “These bloody pricks wouldn’t let me go check – wait – ” His eyes narrowed. “No. Not you.”

“Not her,” said Spike, and sounded oddly subdued.

The new Spike turned around, and the sight of him was like a knife to the gut. He was sunken and too thin, hair a mess and roots dark, and as soon as he saw her he kept staring and couldn’t seem to stop. You hadn’t noticed how much darker his expression was until he’d caught sight of Buffy and lit up.

“What happened to him?” Buffy whispered.

“They didn’t bring you back,” said Cordelia. “After you died. Dawn lives with her dad in L.A., and Spike visits her on weekends, stays in the Hellmouth with the rest of them to help fight.”

“Oh,” Buffy said, and bit down on her lip so hard she tasted blood. Dawn was staring up at the other Spike with tears in her eyes.

“You’re alive,” the other Spike said in wonder.

“Different world,” her Spike said quietly. “Not your world.”

“But somewhere, here, she’s – ” He held Dawn against his chest like he was searching for some support. “Alive.”

“Wasn’t a picnic for her comin’ back,” Real Spike said. “She’s better off where she is already. She’s happy.”

“Okay,” said the other Spike, staring at Buffy hungrily. He looked down and let go of Dawn suddenly. “And you’re – ”

“No,” Dawn said, hushed. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s alright, little bit,” he said, looking easier and better like just the sight of Buffy was enough. “I’m glad you’re here, with your sis. I’d better get back to mine.”

“That’s what they’re here for,” Cordelia assured him. “We’ll find you a way back.”

The other Spike nodded once, looked at Buffy again, and walked away, and somehow Buffy had not said a word to him. There was a clawing feeling in her throat, like she couldn’t breathe. She could not find the words to say, and Willow and Xander had said nothing either.

“So, you see the problem, with all of them,” Cordelia said quietly, while all of them were looking down at the floor. “They’re all different. They’re not meant to be here, and we don’t know how to put them back.”

“I – I’ll see what I can do,” Willow said, looking upset. “I – ”

The Slayer Cordelia had spotted Dawn and was rushing over now, only to be stopped by Angel, who had his eyes narrowed at Spike.

“Dawn?” Chase said. She turned to Buffy, whose hand was being gripped tightly by Dawn. “Wills? Xander? Who is this?”

“Um,” Buffy said. She could feel a headache coming on.

“Time-out!” Xander said. “Serious time-out! Too many Cordelias! Too many Spikes!”

“Everyone sit back down!” Cordelia hollered, and with a great deal of grumbling from some of the Cordelias and Spikes, and a great deal of apologizing from William, everyone sat back around in the circle.

Cordelia turned back to Buffy, Xander, Willow, and Dawn. “Okay!” she said, bringing her hands together. “Fred will show you where they came from.”

▬▬▬▬▬▬

On Angel’s redwood desk lay a single glimmering rose, within the ruins of ripped brown packaging, and over a dozen dark red petals that had fallen off.

“It’s so pretty,” Willow said, reaching out with her hand and stopping short a few inches before touching the table where the package was.

“But also terrifying, seeing as it’s produced more Spikes,” noted Xander. Willow flicked him an exasperated and fond glance, before turning her attention back to the rose.

“Make sure not to touch it,” said the brown-haired girl who’d introduced herself as Fred, wringing her hands. “Some of the Spikes and Cordelias that came outta there ain’t so nice, like Delia – ”

“Who?” Buffy said.

“Vampire Cordelia,” Fred explained. “She’s pretty evil. And sired by Darla, so Angel – anyways, we’re trying to play it safe. We did think, you know, gloves could work. But I tried and another Fred came out.”

“Where is she?” Buffy asked, intrigued. “Is she dangerous?”

“Oh, she’s alright,” Fred assured them. “Lived in a world where she led the humans in Pylea – that’s a demon dimension – to overthrow the demon population, leading to peace between both sides. She wears a lot of black. Anyways, there’s not much science can do without being able to touch that thing, run experiments.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” Willow said, smiling at her.

Spike scowled. “What I don’t get is why _he’s_ here.” He cast a dark look at Randy, who was observing the rose with a thoughtful expression.

“He was a Watcher,” Wesley said. “Graduated with top marks according to him.” This made Xander snort loudly and Spike scowl even more. “He could be helpful, remember some resources that I may not have had access to.”

“The Watchers’ Council wouldn’t have given me any resources past my graduation,” Randy said, shaking his head. “Slimy old bastards. They hated me, and Buff. My Buffy, I mean.”

“Not exactly surprising,” said Buffy with a wry twist to her mouth.

“Still,” Wesley said, “he’s more useful than not. And a great deal more useful than the rest.”

“No hint of who could have sent the package?” Dawn asked.

“No,” Wesley confirmed, and Buffy mainly zoned out. This really wasn’t her thing. She’d pay attention when there was something she could punch. She drifted over to Randy instead, a bit curious about the idea of a Watcher Spike. It was both seriously wigsome and kind of interesting.

And there was color in his cheeks, and faint lines on his forehead.

“So,” she said in an undertone. “You’re my Watcher in your world, huh? How do I do? Do you give me a cookie every time I get something right?”

Randy grinned at her. “Never gave you any cookies, but you’ll always be the best Slayer I’ve ever trained. Anyway, I haven’t been your Watcher in a long while. Got fired in your last year of high school, both as Watcher and librarian.”

“Oh, right. So the – ” Her voice stumbled and she looked down. “The Cruciamentum – ”

“No,” Randy said at once, voice deadly. “I didn’t let them do that.”

“Oh,” Buffy said.

Randy studied her for a moment, tilting his head and looking unnervingly like her Spike. “So who was your Watcher in your world?”

“Giles,” said Buffy. “Rupert Giles.”

“Really?” Randy looked delighted. “Well, that’s as well as could be expected, better than the rest of those knobs. Suppose Lydia’d have been alright too.”

“You knew him?”

“’Course. He was my mentor.”

So that was why Spike was calling him Randy. Buffy resisted the urge to laugh.

“Going to be one of my best men, too,” continued Randy blithely. “Along with Xander and his husband.”

“Xander and his _what_?” squawked Xander loudly, turning around from in front of them. Willow, Fred, and Wesley glared at him.

“Your – what?” Buffy blinked at him. “You’re getting married?”

Randy was smiling. “Yeah. To you.”

“Oh,” Buffy said again, swallowing, and thought hysterically back to her long-ago dreams of daylight weddings with lace veils. And Willow’s Will-Be-Done spell, Spike down on one knee with shining eyes and her own overwhelming happiness. The memory of his hand splayed out on her hip while she writhed in his lap. The moment the spell had lifted and she hadn’t cared because it felt so good until she’d realized –

“You graduated a couple years ago,” Randy said, “and, well. I know it must be strange.”

“I’m glad,” Buffy managed to get out, trying to breathe. “She’s – you’re happy?”

“Never been happier in my life,” said Randy softly. “Think she’d say the same.”

“Good,” Buffy said, not looking him in the face. “That’s good.”

“Did you say Xander and his _husband_?” Xander pressed, still looking at them. “Best men at Spike’s wedding to Buffy? Is this a joke? Is this another spell?”

“You’re not married to him here?” Randy said, frowning, and Buffy slipped away out the door, clenching her fists because she wasn’t going to cry, she wasn’t.

Spike – _her_ Spike – didn’t follow her.

That hurt.

God, she’d made such a fool of herself before.

The lobby was full of Slayer Cordelias and Cordelias in love with her and heartbroken Spikes and an adorable nerd Spike, so she slipped past all of them, being herded into a corner by a harassed-looking Angel, and the real Cordelia. The latter said something that made Angel smile, a silly, loose grin that she didn’t think she’d ever seen him make before, a smile that made her wonder if she and Angel had ever known each other at all.

She went upstairs instead, looking through empty hotel rooms until she heard voices, and followed them to the end of the corridor.

Faith was leaning against the wall beside a room, head tilted back. She looked better than the last time Buffy had seen her, cuts all over her arms and body weighed down with exhaustion, looking over Robin Wood’s wounds. Her face was brighter, hair was combed, her clothes fit her right. “Hey, B,” she said.

“Hey.” Buffy nodded towards the door. “Those the dangerous ones?”

“Yeah,” Faith said, straightening up. “I’d better go in, help Gunn and Lorne. Just taking a break.”

Buffy took a deep breath. “I can go in.”

Faith watched her through hooded eyes. “You sure about that?”

“Yeah,” Buffy said, and pushed the door open.

Inside the room, there was a glamorous, lean Cordelia lounging on the bed, chained to the headboard; a snarling Spike was shackled, on the floor, to the bedposts, wearing his usual uniform of black; two of them knocked out on the floor with handcuffs on their wrists; another, this one in the same clothes as her own, reclined lazily against the wall, wrists tied back with rope; and the last Spike was beside him, all in black with a dangerous look in his eyes.

Gunn and Lorne looked up when she came in, Faith following her and closing the door with a clink behind them. Around them were an array of stakes, holy water, and crosses, and Gunn had one hand on the curtains like he was ready to open them at any second.

“Slayer,” the last Spike said, flashing a smile that was all teeth. “You’re alive in this world.”

Buffy flinched, steeled herself, and said, “What, don’t tell me you actually managed to kill me in yours?”

“Hell of a fight,” he said, smirking. He wasn’t any older or younger, but his eyes weren’t as melancholy as her Spike’s were, his posture easy, unbroken. She wondered if she’d been Spike’s salvation or his ruination. He’d never resented her for bringing him down from who he’d been before.

 _I may be love’s bitch, but at least I’m man enough to admit it,_ he’d told her once.

This Spike didn’t seem like he’d ever say anything like that to her, looking at her amused like she was a clever toy.

“Buffy,” Faith murmured from behind her, “I don’t think you should – ”

“The rest of you didn’t, I’m guessing,” Buffy said, lifting her chin up and looking at the other vampires coolly. “One out of four isn’t very good odds.”

_All we need, is for one of us, just one of us –_

“Don’t hold your breath,” Delia said, stretching with a clang of her handcuffs. “I get back to my world, I’m sure I’ll live to see you and your horrible fashion sense die a terrible death at Angel’s hands.”

“Angel?” Buffy said, flinching back.

“Her world’s in the past,” Gunn said, eyes shadowed, grip tight on the curtain. “Six years.”

Angel’d lost his soul. If Cordelia had been sired by Darla, and Angel with his soul had already slaughtered Darla herself – Buffy swallowed, trying not to imagine it. “I doubt that.”

“The rest of these Spikes are just totally pathetic,” Delia said, sounding so much like Cordelia Buffy shuddered. Cordelia was so honest already in real life, to the point of being insensitive, that it made some twisted sense she wouldn’t have changed much as a vampire. “Three of them even had a truce with you. Disgraceful, really.”

“Hey,” the Spike in a red shirt protested. “Not you harping on about that bloody truce, it was years ago. I’m on a merry rampage halfway across the world from Sunnyhell, and I don’t really appreciate being yanked back to L.A.”

Drusilla must not have broken up with him, then.

“And you?” Buffy said, turning to the only one left, on the floor.

“Haven’t killed you yet, Slayer, but not for a lack of trying,” he sneered. “Can’t believe you gave the Gem of Amara to sodding Peaches, who just _destroyed_ it, by the way, and as soon as I’m back in Sunnydale, I’ll kill you and I’ll take my time.”

“Oh, please. You haven’t got the balls,” Delia said derisively. “You’ll probably fall in love with her like the rest.”

“I’d never!” said the non-chipped Spike, affronted.

“You’d better go, sugar,” said Lorne in an undertone, as the vampires broke out arguing. “I think you get under their skin.”

“I always did,” Buffy said quietly. “The other two, they – ”

Lorne looked sympathetic. “Don’t think you really want to know.”

“No, I do,” Buffy said. “I _have_ to know, I need – ”

“One of them says you’ve been dead for years,” Gunn said. “The other one killed you himself. Turned you into a vampire. To hear him tell it, was a mistake.”

Buffy recoiled, taking a shaky step back, but forced herself to meet Gunn’s eye and say, “Thank you.” She looked one last time at the Spike who’d killed her, before turning around and out the door so that she wouldn’t have to see that unfamiliar look in his eyes.

“B,” Faith said quietly from behind her.

“I’m fine,” Buffy said without turning. “Just – keep an eye out for them.”

“Yeah,” Faith said after a moment. “You got it, boss.”

Buffy kept going, away from that room. It was too much, all too much. A day ago she’d been in London and Spike had been a dream; today she was in L.A. and he was everywhere. A hotel full of Spikes, a Spike that was human and marrying her, a Spike that was in shambles without her, and all she really wanted was hers, the one she knew down to her bones.

She found another one instead, sitting on the stairs and leaning against the railing. He was smoking and without his duster, shoulders lean and bunching up under his shirt.

She sat down next to him before she could think better of it, and said, “I’m guessing we’re not together in your world. By the lack of any spontaneous hugging.”

“Nah,” this Spike said, turning his face slightly to her. The look in his eyes was a relief: soft like she’d seen for the past three years. “My Slayer’s not mine. Never jumped through any portals, though. ’Spose that’s better than most of these sorry bastards.”

“Yeah,” Buffy said, watching the smoke from his cigarette drift up in the air.

“You’ll be looking for one of the souled ones, then?”

Buffy looked at him curiously. “One of?”

“About three of them, I reckon,” Spike said. “That tosser working with Angel here, another who’s livin’ happily with you as some sorta nancy-boy professor, and one who just got his soul back. Covered in bruises. Said he had to prove somethin’ to you.”

Three of them that had won back their soul for her sake, maybe more. Buffy closed her eyes for a moment. “And you?”

“Me?” Spike said, taking another drag. He leered at her, and she realized she’d missed that look, all coy eyes and suggestive tongue. She went still, licked her lips. He noticed, eyebrows furrowing. Stared at her, eyes drifting down briefly to her neckline, before clearing his throat. Buffy flushed. He went on, “Not planning on going out to get one anytime soon. Always nice to know it’s a possibility. Compare notes with my various selves. Some of ’em are alright. Most are wankers.”

“What about the Buffy in your world?”

Spike snorted. “Suspect she wouldn’t give me the time of day. I don’t mind much, pet. At least we’re both alive. And you’re...you’re not her.” He sounded miserable all of a sudden. “She doesn’t want me. Either way, don’t think all of us need a soul for her _–_ you – to look at us twice. You end up stuck here and not allowed out at risk of getting locked up, you get bored enough to listen to all these wankers and their life stories. Fair couple of them are with you without any soul. Most aren’t. Some hate your guts. Some still in denial. A soul – don’t reckon it’ll change who I am.”

It hadn’t, she thought. Who he was, the heart of him, had been the same. He’d always tried so goddamn hard.

 _Evil soulless thing_ , she’d said over and over again, until both of them believed it. She’d forgotten that it wasn’t the whole truth.

“I don’t think the Buffy in my world would ever...” Spike trailed off.

Buffy looked at him and he looked back: too-sharp cheekbones, too-blue eyes, a too-innocent mouth.

She stood up and said, “Maybe she’ll surprise you.”

This did surprise him; he moved back, tilted his head to look at her with some sort of wonder. Buffy walked away before she could do something stupid, something like touch him, just touch him, any one of them, the ones that she knew still loved her.

She wondered if she should go back to the office, see how they were getting along, if anyone was looking for her. She returned to the lobby instead and saw that it had been emptied out, with just Spike sitting on the couch. And it was her Spike. She could tell the moment he turned his head and saw her, stood up, ungainly, like he hadn’t even meant to do it.

Sometimes he did things like that, contradictory things that didn’t make sense with who he _was_ , things that Buffy couldn’t figure out, things she didn’t want to figure out because she couldn’t understand what they could mean. Standing up, absently, when a woman entered the room; opening the door for her; paying off his debts and keeping his word for some inane reason, some principles he’d kept the hundred-odd years he’d lived, an odd sort of honor when he fought. He could be so _sweet_ sometimes, tender.

Buffy sat down cross-legged next to him. She saw his shoulders tense up and settle down when he lowered himself down, one knee up on the sofa and the other spread out against the floor, boot tapping out an anxious rhythm.

She let herself breathe, and said, “Did you know we’re supposed to be getting married in one universe?”

“Randy tells everyone. He hasn’t shut up about it the three days they’ve all been here,” Spike muttered, giving her a half-smile. “Haven’t you still got our wedding plans?”

“Every embarrassing detail,” Buffy confirmed.

“Wonder if Wind Beneath My Wings will play for the first dance?”

“Oh, shut up,” Buffy said, shoving his shoulder. They were both not looking at each other and every breath was a painful stab in Buffy’s chest, when he reached out like he couldn’t help it and touched one golden tendril of her hair.

“Sorry,” said Spike, reverent, “it’s just – you grew it out.”

“I did,” Buffy said, holding her breath and exhaling loudly when he let go, putting his hand to the side awkwardly. Before she could lose her nerve, she reached out and intertwined her hand with his, slowly. She could still feel the fire, hear the distant sound of the Hellmouth crashing around them, everything faded and unimportant except for the two of them.

 _I love you,_ she’d said, wrenched it out of her mouth, tears in her eyes. And he had thrown it back in her face, had not come back to her because of it, so that it made her doubt herself now. Was it love? Was this love? Nothing like Angel, nothing like Riley. She’d thought of it the whole bus ride out of the wreck that had been Sunnydale, sitting next to Xander and not talking to each other because neither of them had really been able to speak. Had he been right?

It had _hurt_ , it _hurt._ Everything was too much and so bright, the idea of leaving him impossible. She’d known, he’d never leave with her. _He can be a good man_ , she’d said, and had felt so proud, so proud that she’d been right. So proud of him her heart was about to burst.

 _I love you._ Let that be the last thing he heard her say. She remembered his voice in an empty church as he draped himself across a cross and watched himself burn: _she shall look on him with forgiveness, and everybody will forgive and love. He will be loved._ Let him have died loved, she’d thought. God, let him have known he was loved.

If that wasn’t love, what else could it possibly be?

Once Buffy had fallen asleep in his crypt before she had chopped off her hair, before she could rush out in a flurry of righteous disgust, and he must have lifted her from the rug to the bed. She remembered drifting out of sleep, warm and comfortable. Him a careful distance away from her. Hearing his voice say something softly.  _Her hair was long, her foot was light, and her eyes were wild._ He hadn’t realized she was awake, was half asleep himself. She’d been dreaming again before she could furiously stomp out, and woken before him, crept out without a backwards look.

She hadn’t loved him then. But she’d been well on her way, and it had terrified her.

On the way away from her home in ruins, she’d thought of his favorite Passions characters and the shining light of his soul, the rings on his fingers and his hand helping her up from the floor, the mug he used for his blood and his mouth on her shoulder, singing the Ramones and saying her name.

 _I do,_ she’d thought. _I do I do I do._

Too late.

His thumb stroked the palm of her hand, once, twice, and he said absently, like he was quoting something, “What the hand, seize the fire?”

It sounded familiar. She thought about her brief and bewildering glimpses of the stacks of books in Spike’s crypt – Keats, Plath, Whitman, Blake, Wilde – before they’d gone up in flames, Randy graduating from the Watchers’ Academy, and William with Cordelia’s arm linked through the crook of his elbow. She asked, “What did you want to be when you were a kid?”

Spike gave her an odd look, a rueful smile. “You’d laugh at me.”

“I’m not going to laugh at you!”

“Got a lot of practice with that, anyhow,” he said, shaking his head. “Alright – I wanted to be a pirate.”

Buffy grinned. “A pirate? Really?”

“Yeah. ’Cos they were free and they didn’t have any rules, and all they did was have adventures and bring back gold. I was rubbish at sailing, though, and my father started to tell me about how improper that was, that pirates were nasty devils who scorned the work of honest men – so I wanted to be a knight instead, like in my bedtime stories. Not much for the glory, just the idea of riding off into the sunset saving virtuous maidens.” His smile faded and Buffy squeezed his hand tighter. “Not an attainable goal. And then I wanted to be a poet. Stuck with me till I died. Was a bloody awful one.”

In her mind she saw Spike on his knees telling her that death was her art, heard _love isn’t brains children it’s blood, you’re in my gut...my throat, I’m drowning in you Summers_. “I don’t think so,” she said.

“And you can keep that shocked tone out of your voice, Summers, because you know, I’ve got _layers_ , and – what did you say?”

Buffy rolled her eyes. “I said I don’t think so.”

“Oh. Well, when I say bloody awful, I mean it.” Spike snorted. “I knew it, too. Kept on, for some reason.”

“You don’t give up easily,” Buffy said.

“And you? What’d you want to be before all this?”

“Oh...something stupid.” Buffy shrugged. “Hadn’t put much thought into it. Always thought I would have more time to figure it out, and then it didn’t matter. I wanted to be Inigo Montoya when I was seven.”

Spike’s eyes were crinkling. “That’s not too far off, is it?”

“Guess not. Or an ice skater. I always wanted to be Dorothy Hamill. But I am a skating instructor now.”

“How’s that going?” Spike said, and managed to sound interested, like he really cared about how it was going. Eyes gentle and an odd quirk to his mouth like he was proud.

“It’s good,” Buffy said, looking down at their hands instead of his face, and then, softly, “I missed you.”

Spike didn’t answer for a few minutes. When he did his voice was quiet and careful, controlled. “I was going to find you,” he said.

“It wouldn’t have mattered to me that you weren’t – that I couldn’t touch you.” Buffy swallowed. “I mean that I would have figured it out.”

“It’s not that.” Spike laughed sharply, wildly. “Jesus, Buffy, I sacrifice myself for the world because it’s, it’s right, and I got it, I finally understood you, I _got it._ Nineteen days later I’m tossed back here like I deserve another chance to live, and I _don’t._ I did the right thing once, and now I’m back here, instead of Tara or Anya or Joyce. ’S not fair.”

“You don’t give yourself enough credit.”

“You give me too much.”

“I _don’t_ ,” Buffy snapped. “I’m not blind. I know who you are. I know who you’re not. You didn’t do the right thing once. You’ve done it before, without a soul, without a chip.”

Spike shook his head. “You know why I didn’t call you? I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t figure it out. What could top that? What reason do I have to be in your life now? I thought: leave you alone in peace. Leave myself as a memory, the vampire who saved the world because you saved him. Now…” He looked helpless. “I don’t know what to do.”

That was so ridiculous that all Buffy could manage to say was, “Are you _stupid_?” And before she could say anything else, or before Spike could give a retort, Willow had come into the lobby and said excitedly, “I think I’ve got it!”

**III.**

“So the idea here,” Willow said, placing candles around a pentagram of white chalk drawn on the floor of the lobby, “is that in order to get them back where they’re meant to be, they need an anchor to their world. At least one of us has to be alive in their worlds, so we can theoretically be their anchors. Randy, does Giles agree?”

“Yeah,” Randy said, one hand covering the speaker of Willow’s phone. “He says it should work, assuming – ”

“Assuming we can get them to the right worlds,” Willow finished, settling back on her knees and surveying the pentagram. She turned to the rest of them. “It’s not stable, you see? We can’t act as proper anchors because we’re not from their worlds. So we have to make sure they end up in the right place. The petals – ” She lifted up one already fallen petal of the rose she’d placed in the center of the circle. “Those represent each alternate universe. Problem is, we don’t know which petals, uh, worlds they belong to. We can’t be precise.”

“So, what,” Buffy said skeptically, “we just send them through and hope for the best?”

A lot of the Spikes and Cordelias, and the one Fred, were starting to look both terrified and impatient. Excluding Delia and the other Spikes, who were knocked out on the floor with Faith and Angel and Real Spike standing guard. Even Randy, finishing up a call with Giles – and Buffy would really love to know how that conversation had gone –, was panicking. He’d said if he was gone any longer his Buffy was going to tear the world apart looking for him, possibly the fabric of the universe.

Willow shook her head. “I’m thinking if we have an item of their clothing, that can narrow it down. Since their clothes came from their world.”

Oh, great. A room full of partially clothed Spikes. That was going to do wonders for her self control.

She looked across the room at her Spike, who was exchanging barbs with Angel while Faith snickered, and looked away. She hadn’t gotten the chance to explain what an idiot he was, why would he _ever_ have thought –

“You love him?”

Buffy turned her head so fast she nearly got whiplash, and didn’t exactly relax when she recognized Chase.

“I,” Buffy said, and didn’t know how she could say it to her when she’d said it to Spike and even he hadn’t believed her. She followed Chase’s gaze to Angel. “You love Angel.”

She guessed if Cordelia was a Slayer – she didn’t want to think about it. Despite the twenty or so years of believing she had a sister, she was pretty aware she had serious only child syndrome. She’d always had a problem with jealousy when it came to Cordelia, anyway. And the idea that in one universe, she was a normal girl living an oblivious, meaningless, happy life in L.A. was impossible. She’d wanted it once, but...The idea that she was living without _Dawn_ was unfathomable, awful.

Chase’s mouth quirked. “Oh, that’s mature. Yeah, I do.” She lifted her chin up, and Buffy felt some pang of understanding: her tired eyes and way of carefully assessing everyone she met were all too familiar. This Cordelia would know what it had been like, one girl in all the world, in the way that only Buffy and Kendra had. “I’ve got to get back to my world. Protect Dawn. You ever faced Glory?”

Buffy’s stomach turned. “Three years ago.”

Chase nodded, carefully. “You mind telling me how?”

So while Willow was setting everything up, Buffy took Chase aside and told her in very firm words what exactly to do.

Chase had paled, but she seemed resolute and ready, and it made Buffy wonder if there were any Spikes she could give some advice to. 

“Hey,” she couldn’t help asking, “Spike...in your world...is he – ”

She wanted to know, if the only reason he’d ever fallen in love with her was because she was the Slayer, if switching her out wouldn’t have made any impact like it seemed not to have made an impact for Angel, for anyone else in Chase’s world. Because she could imagine Spike falling in love with this Cordelia, with her long brown hair and battle scars, very easily.

“I haven’t seen Spike since he came around looking for the Gem of Amara,” Chase said. “And I kicked his ass then.”

Buffy was senselessly relieved. At the same time her heart ached imagining a Dawn who’d never become friends with Spike. “Oh. But Angel, you said you loved him? He lives in Sunnydale in your world?”

“He left,” Chase admitted, “but this year Willow helped me find a way to override the curse, so he came back.”

She didn’t ask if Angel had loved Buffy in this world. Buffy imagined she didn’t want to know.

“Right,” Buffy said, and almost wanted to laugh. She’d never even thought of asking Willow to try and fix the curse, even though she’d had the power in spades for years now. Neither had Angel. They’d both mostly just stewed in their own misery. “You should tell this Angel. About that.”

“I did,” Chase said.

“Right,” Buffy said again, and felt herself moving away, away from this Cordelia who had gotten exactly what she had wanted, once upon a time, who was telling her of a Buffy who had gotten exactly what she had wanted, once upon a time. “Sorry, I’m – I’m going to go.” She walked away, making her way blindly outside. This was too much, all of it was too much, one bombshell dropped over another over and over again. She needed –

Air. The sun on her face. In Angel’s garden, spread out and green and bright in the way she hadn’t seen since Sunnydale.

It didn’t seem fair, she couldn’t help thinking, that he’d gotten to live here, lived in some fancy lawyer place now, while she’d worked a job at the Doublemeat Palace just to keep her mom’s house. Not that she would have wanted to live here, just.

She missed everything about Sunnydale in a baffling, ridiculous way. She loved London, too, their sprawling mansion and the rain. It was a new start, she was cut loose, free. But she just missed it, inexplicably, truly. The Bronze, the Magic Box, 1630 Revello Drive, Spike’s crypt, the old high school library, the system of tunnels she’d known like the back of her hand. Tara, Anya, Spike, her mom. Everything about who they had been there.

Someone cleared their throat politely.

Buffy rolled her eyes. “Boy, I really can’t get away from you guys, can I?”

No tinglies, out in the sun, and Randy was inside. She wasn’t surprised to see William, leaning against the entrance to the door. With his hands in the pockets of his suit jacket, he looked like Spike. It was stupidly reassuring.

“My apologies,” he said. “I can go, of course, if you came to be alone. I understand that well enough, myself.”

Buffy felt herself smile. “I can be alone with you here.”

“Oh,” William said, hands bunching up in his pockets. “Alright.”

“You seem like you’re coping pretty well, with um, all of this,” Buffy said. “You don’t know me or anything, do you?”

William offered her a half-smile. “No. But I am, to be quite honest, fairly certain I’m dreaming. Either that or I am trapped in the future, with over a dozen of my bloodthirsty demon doppelgangers keeping me company and quite a few ladies that seem to be in, er, their underthings.”

Buffy looked down at her dress, bemused, guessing she looked a bit like a shameless hussy to a Victorian gentleman. “Right.”

“You don’t require any coverings?” William asked, half-shrugging off his suit jacket. And damn, the rolled-up sleeves and spectacles were actually pretty sexy, she wondered if she could ever convince Spike...Her thoughts hit a pause there. Spike didn’t seem to want to come back with her at all.

Now William was carefully draping the suit jacket over her shoulders, fingers brushing bare skin and electricity sparkling where he touched her. He quickly moved away. Buffy felt herself blush, which was just ridiculous. If she looked at him she could see a tell-tale pink on his cheeks, too.

“Thank you,” she said, feeling the jacket settle around her, warm and comfortable. “But it’s alright. They’re going to need that for the spell. An item of your clothing.”

“Spell,” William echoed, taking his jacket back and holding it over his arms. “That would be hersey where I’m from. Not proper.”

“Is that important to you?” Buffy said, thinking of what Spike had told her before. Maybe it was cheating to get information about Spike from a bashful alternate universe version of him, but whatever. “What’s proper?”

William looked surprised. “Important to _me_? No, it’s – I’m not good at it. Being proper. Not good at any of it.”

“You seem all with the proper-y-ness to me,” Buffy said, which earned her a perfectly puzzled look. “I mean, chivalrous, with your manners and stuff.”

“No,” William said. “It’s not just manners, it’s – conversation, posture, money.” His voice started to get louder, agitated. “Beliefs, religion, death, love. I’ve never done it right. I don’t belong here, of course, but I don’t belong there either. I think here, at least I see a path of who I could be, a place where I matter, where you – ” He broke off, looking embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go on.”

“It’s okay,” Buffy said, reaching out one hand to touch him before she pulled it back quickly. She studied him, this odd version of who Spike used to be. Nothing like the one she knew, on paper. But the stubborn tilt to his chin – death, love – all bit and parcel of who he was. He’d said he didn’t belong, but he didn’t sound ashamed of that. He’d admitted it to her freely. There was a bravery here, even in his slumped shoulders and hesitant voice. Nothing like Spike’s brash recklessness. Something quieter.

Spike never had been ashamed of who he was.

“I like it when you go on,” she said to William, and immediately felt stupid. “Not that I’ve met you before but – you’re not so different from those demons, you know.”

William looked aghast. “I hope I am. I’d never – never hurt anyone.”

“Oh,” Buffy said, clenching her hand into a fist so she wouldn’t reach out to touch him again. “I’m sure you wouldn’t. That’s not what I meant.”

William frowned at her, like he wanted to argue, but he didn’t. His hand was clenched into a fist in his pocket too. Neither one of them touched each other. They just stood there, looking outside with the sun gentle on their faces like a lover welcoming them home.

▬▬▬▬▬▬

“No,” Buffy said.

They’d all been rounded up in the lobby, the Spikes wary and the Cordelias mindful, around twenty of them in total, with Gunn, Lorne, and Fred’s alternate self watching over them. The Scoobies, Angel, Cordelia, Faith, Wesley, and Fred were gathered in a corner to listen to Willow explain the spell.

“Buffy,” Willow said quietly, “it’s the only way. They can’t stay here. Not just because of logistics, but they physically and mentally don’t belong here. Bad, implode-y, apocalypse stuff could happen. Look...the whole point of the Key is that it opens doors. Dimensional doors. That’s what the Key is. It unlocks the gates between the dimensions. It can unlock the doors between our universe and theirs, send them home.”

“ _Dawn_ ,” Buffy said sharply. “Not it. You’re talking about _Dawn_.” She let out a long breath, running a hand haggardly through her hair. “What will it do to her?”

She didn’t want Dawn anywhere near this. Chase bringing up Glory, and now this...It was all-encompassing fear that she felt now. But it wasn’t her choice now. It was Dawn’s. She looked at Dawn now, this self-assured young woman, clever and headstrong, eyes bright and blue, jaw set. She knew what Dawn’s choice would be.

“Nothing,” Fred hurried to reassure her. “Really. She acts as a source. She’ll be fine by the end of it.”

“You promise?” Buffy said, looking at Willow. Nothing personal, but she didn’t know Fred that well. She trusted Willow to tell her the truth, even if part of that trust had broken the day all of them had told her to get out of her house.

“No side effects, nothing dangerous,” Willow confirmed.

“Buffy, I’ll be fine,” said Dawn earnestly. “I’ve gotta do this, use it for good for once.”

Buffy sighed, acquiesced. “Can you send them all back at once?”

“Yes,” Willow began.

“Whoa, hold on a second,” Xander interrupted. “We’re going to send back the evil Cordelia and Spikes too? Knowingly put them back in their world, despite what damage they could do? We’re not going to...stake them?”

Willow looked miserable. “Xand, we _can’t_ mess with things like that. We don’t know what will happen when they get home.”

“They’ll _kill_ ,” Xander said. “They’ll hurt people.”

“He’s not wrong,” Cordelia said, ignoring the way Angel had looked at her suddenly. “It could be better for their worlds if we did them a favour and dusted them now.”

Faith crossed her arms. “Yeah. He’s got a point.”

“Yeah, so what if he does? You haven’t learned your lesson yet about playing God, Harris, or does Red need to give you another demo?” Spike said, looking at Xander coolly. “They were never meant to be here in the first place. Could cause more problems staking ’em than putting ’em back.”

“Of course _you’d_ say that – ” Xander blustered.

“Spike is correct,” said Wesley, and Willow nodded. “Even if we did kill them, they don’t exist in this realm. We have no idea what would happen. It would be foolhardy to attempt it. We simply have to trust that the Buffy and Angel back in their worlds will be able to handle them.”

Buffy shrugged, fingering the stake strapped to her thigh. “Pretty sure we can.”

She could feel Spike smirking from beside her, muscles tense, but they hadn’t said anything to each other since Willow had interrupted them. She wasn’t sure when they were going to be able to. This place was full to the brim with ghosts past, no room for a future.

If he wanted one with her at all, that is.

▬▬▬▬▬▬

Buffy was honestly pretty starving, so they gathered in the kitchen to eat sandwiches and take turns microwaving blood to give to the vampires, who’d been sequestered in the dining room. After Buffy had devoured her fifth sandwich, she grabbed a mug of blood from Cordelia and found the Spike from the universe where she’d died and hadn’t come back.

He was sitting in the corner, on the floor with his knees up. He flinched when he looked up and saw her, accepting the mug from her silently.

“I’ve got something to ask you,” Buffy said, sitting down next to him, taking a deep breath.

His grip on the mug’s handle looked so tight she was half-worried it’d shatter. “Anything. You know that, Slayer.”

“How long has it been for you, since I was gone?”

“Two hundred and eleven days,” Spike said. “Two hundred and twelve, today. But I suppose today doesn’t really count, does it? Or maybe it does. I get back and you’re still gone.”

Buffy closed her eyes, once. When she opened them, she saw that he was watching her, as if he were trying to commit her to memory. “Can you tell Dawn...God. Can you tell her I love her? So much. Don’t let her waste her life, please. Let her be happy. Take her on patrols, teach her how to defend herself. But let her live too. Do whatever she likes with her life.”

“’Course,” Spike said, quiet. “I will. I take care of her, like you wanted me to. I remember.”

Buffy’s throat was burning. “I know you do. I trust you.” With Dawn more than anyone else; she would always be their first priority. “Tell them all. Giles, Willow, Xander, Tara, Anya. And don’t let them try and bring me back, it’s – it’ll be dangerous. People will die.”

“Yeah.”

“One more thing.” Buffy reached out and found his free hand, cold and callused. She fit them together, smiled down faintly at the sight. “Take care of yourself too.”

“What’s that, pet?”

“You,” Buffy said. “Don’t...you and Dawn both, I want you to live. Be happy. You look like shit.”

“Thanks ever so,” Spike said sarcastically. “You sound like niblet.” But he was looking at her with an incredible wonder, his hand holding her hand so tight it hurt.

“Just drink more blood, and look after yourself,” Buffy said. “Please.”

“Okay,” said Spike, at once. “Okay. I will.”

“Okay,” Buffy echoed, and stood up, hand slipping from his.

“Buffy,” Spike said, catching her wrist. He ducked his head slightly, like he was embarrassed, or like he couldn’t bear to look at her. “Thank you.”

“No,” Buffy whispered, shaking her head. “Thank you.”

She walked away. She half-expected him to follow her, was both relieved and disappointed when he didn’t.

Ten minutes later, the lobby was filled with all of them, the Spikes and Cordelias bickering with each other and everyone else mostly trying to fend off a headache. Willow was finishing up the pentagram, lighting all the candles.

Buffy and Angel stood guard over Delia and the other Spikes. She was pretty sure Angel had found some satisfaction in knocking out the five Spikes with five punches, but he wasn’t looking down at Delia. Just as well, really, considering Buffy wasn’t looking directly at any of the Spikes either. They’d had to take off each one’s outer layer, and the bracelet on Delia’s wrist.

Buffy cast a glance at Angel, staring stoically straight ahead, and asked, “Did Chase tell you, in her world, you don’t have the curse?”

“Yeah,” he said. Then, “Buffy…”

Buffy said, “I thought Spike wasn’t ever going to come back.”

Angel said, “I thought Cordelia wasn’t ever going to wake up.”

They’d said it at the same time. They stared at each other, and laughed a bit, Angel scrubbing at his hair awkwardly.

“You should have told me,” Buffy said. “I deserved to know. I don’t care about whatever macho jealousy thing you and Spike have going on. It wasn’t fair of you to hide it from me.”

Angel wasn’t looking at her. “Do you love him?”

She was getting really tired of people who weren’t Spike asking her that. “Yes,” she said, threw it out there defiantly. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

God, it felt good to say it.

Angel hissed out a breath. “Buffy, it’s _Spike_.”

“I _know_ ,” Buffy said. “Spike, who’s helped saved the world dozens of times now, and is helping you now. You don’t see me saying anything about Cordelia, and that majorly freaks me out. Seriously. It’s weird.”

“I never said I – ”

“Come on,” Buffy said, tired. “We don’t have to pretend with each other.”

Angel was silent for a few moments. “Alright. So I guess, last year, when you – guess you were just throwing me a bone, huh?”

She didn’t know why she’d kissed him or given him that speech about cookies last year at all. It seemed so faraway, like nothing compared to the battle on the Hellmouth. It had faded away, unimportant background noise. She’d been sure she might not make it through that battle – maybe she’d just wanted to kiss him one last time, or see if it meant more than Spike, try and figure out what this clawing feeling in her chest was. It hadn’t felt much like anything at all. She’d kicked herself for it later, when Spike –

“I don’t think either one of us was really there,” Buffy said, and heard Spike’s voice: _Were you there with me_? And her reply: _I was._

She and Angel had moved on from each other long ago. It wasn’t fair for either one of them to be stringing each other along now.

Angel’s expression was shuttered in pain for a minute. “No. I don’t think we were.”

Delia’s eyes snapped open. “Well, isn’t this touching,” she snarked, smirking. Without pause Buffy slammed her boot into the side of her head until she had fallen unconscious again.

Angel looked a bit shaken, but he gave her a sad half-smile, and they dragged the vampires over to Willow.

▬▬▬▬▬▬

In the middle of the lobby: the pentagram, candles placed at each point. In the middle of the pentagram: Dawn, cross-legged with the rose in front of her and its fallen petals arranged around in a circle. At one point of the pentagram: Buffy, with Spike at her left and Faith at her right. Opposite them: Willow, and Xander, the five of them with their hands intertwined. Around the pentagram: a circle made up of black T-shirts, jewellery, a suit jacket, and a UC Sunnydale sweatshirt, all carefully set apart from each other. And behind a line of glimmering purple sand were around twenty different versions of Spike and Cordelia, plus one Fred, each sitting a careful distance away from each other.

Buffy spared a moment of feeling for William, who probably thought this was a hallucination, or at the very least the devil’s work.

None of the Spikes had been willing to part with their duster, even though Willow had assured them they’d get it back, which did very little for her concentration because a great portion of them were shirtless underneath. And it was a miracle all of them were even staying quiet for the ritual, she thought. But then, they wanted to get home as desperately as Angel, who watched on silently with the others, wanted them to leave.

“Goddess, hear me,” Willow chanted. “I summon the elements to restore balance. The skies and the soil, the living and the dead, the in-between and the nowhere. I call upon the Key to unlock the door, to open the gates and restore the balance. I call upon magic, that which is eternal and ever-changing. Adducam eos in domum suam.”

“I call upon endurance,” said Xander, taking over, “that which is stable and solid. Adducam eos in domum suam.”

“I call upon death, that which has no mercy nor no maliciousness, simply the truth,” Spike said, voice like a melody, easy and unyielding. “Adducam eos in domum suam.”

That was Buffy’s cue. She hoped she’d get the stupid Latin right. “I call upon life, that which is finite and golden, the cruelty of sunlight. Adducam eos in domum suam.”

Faith’s hand tightened in Buffy’s. “I call upon the balance, dark and light, death and life, that which is constant and vital. Adducam eos in domum suam.”

“From chaos does order fall,” said Willow, her voice getting louder and her hair turning lighter. “From destruction do we find salvation. In every universe there is the Key, the balance, good and evil. Find the constants, the anchors. Open the doors. Send them home, where they belong.” She flicked her wrist, and the rose in front of Dawn floated up in the air in front of Willow, its fallen petals falling back into the rose. Willow’s head jerked up, her hands pulling Xander and Faith towards her, and Buffy and Spike towards Faith. “Adducam eos in domum suam!”

Dawn was glowing a faint green, and Willow was gasping; once more she said, “Open the doors and send them through!”

The circle of clothing and the lines of Spikes, Cordelias, and Fred vanished as if they had never been here in the first place.

Willow’s head fell back, exposing the pale and freckled column of her neck. She let out a long sigh of relief. Before any of them could say anything, Willow’s eyes narrowed and she said, “Buffy, what is that on your – ”

Buffy looked down and vaguely saw a grey thread on her shoulder, but her body felt so heavy, and her mind uncertain. She felt her eyes dragging shut, her grip on Spike and Faith’s hands easing.

The rose fell into Willow’s hair. Dawn’s eyes went wide.

The candles flickered, once, twice, and went out.

**IV.**

She woke up with a feeling like she’d been falling, all the way down, and had suddenly jerked awake.

A couch. She was on a couch, something hard and rock-solid, but still gentle under her head. Mm. Comfy. Wait. No. That wasn’t the couch.

Buffy blinked rapidly and refocused to a dimly lit, familiar room. White walls. Picture frames on the walls of _her_ , her and Willow and Xander and Anya and Tara and Giles. A television, a rug, another couch, an armchair.

Someone startling under her.

Buffy pushed herself up, saw her sweatpants-clad legs tangled up with black jeans, her socked feet kicking off the couch. She turned her head slightly and looked right into Spike’s eyes, bright blue.

She was pillowed against his chest, one of his arms sneaking down to her stomach and tracing circles into her T-shirt, the other stroking her hair.

This must have been a dream.

“Buffy?” Spike mumbled, shaking his head. “What…?”

She looked around, sleepy and comfortable, but with an unnerving, sharp-edged realization that something was seriously wrong. On the floor in front of her and Spike she recognized Lorne, dozing peacefully, and Gunn, snoring, with their heads resting against the couch and a blanket tossed over both of them. On the armchair was Faith, awake. In front of the other couch was – Oz? And on the couch lay Willow, the rose still in her hair, her face ashen, next to –

Buffy stood up, Spike’s arm tumbling from her stomach.

She put one hand to her mouth. Her voice came out hoarse and choked. “Tara?”

Willow was crying, her hand gently stroking Tara’s hair. Tara slept on with her head resting against Willow’s shoulder, a half-smile on her face. Buffy’s eyes were burning.

“What happened?” Faith said, standing up. “What’s – ”

“We messed it up,” Willow whispered, crying harder, still silent. “I don’t know how.”

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Spike said quietly. “C’mon. Before any of ’em wake up.”

“No,” Willow said, shaking her head and rocking Tara back and forth, “no, no, I won’t, I can’t, I’m not leaving her, it’s _her_ , look – ”

“Wils,” said Buffy, hushed, “we’re not meant to be here, we’ve got to figure it out.”

“She’ll be right here,” Faith added. “We’ll just step out of the room, figure it out, and come back.”

Willow looked up, seemed to register Oz, and looked even more shocked, another tear falling down from her eyes.

“We’ve got to find Harris,” Spike said. “He’s not here.”

This seemed to shock Willow out of it. “Okay.” She moved Tara’s head away from her shoulder, tender, and pressed a kiss to Tara’s forehead before following Buffy, Spike, and Faith out of the room.

“This is Xander’s apartment,” Buffy said, recognizing it now. “He’s got to be around here somewhere.” She stopped when she thought they were a safe enough distance away from the others, and turned around. “Okay, now what the hell is going on?”

“The spell worked,” Faith said, with a glance at Willow. “I saw them disappear. It did what it was meant to do.”

“Then why are we here?” Buffy asked. “And where _is_ here?”

“I think it must be an alternate universe,” said Willow, subdued. “Instead of them coming out of their universes, we’ve landed in one of theirs.”

Buffy looked around. “Which one? This is just Xander’s apartment. I mean, granted, Gunn and Lorne and Oz are here, which is weird – ”

“And me,” Faith said, frowning. “I’m not meant to be here.”

“None of us are,” Willow said. “This shouldn’t be possible. If I’d thought it was possible I wouldn’t have done the spell at all. It shouldn’t be happening.”

“Well, it is,” Spike said, strolling over to Xander’s bedroom door and opening it.

“Spike – ” Buffy started, coming over to him, only to stop short. “Oh.”

It was Xander and Anya’s bedroom, exactly how she remembered it from before the not-wedding. Anya was sleeping on the bed wrapped up in sheets, with Xander sitting up next to her, his hands over his face.

Willow had slipped in. “Xand – oh God.”

“They’re both alive,” Spike said, hoarse. He scrubbed a hand over his eyes, and Buffy put a hand on his shoulder, to balance herself or him or both. “Glinda and the bird. Makes this world a hell of a lot better than ours already.”

“What’s going on?” Xander said, voice thick and rasping. “Ahn – she’s here – and I can see, with both of my eyes – ”

“We have to leave,” Faith said, hovering behind them uncertainly. “We can’t answer any of their questions if they wake up. We don’t know who they are.”

“Of course I know who she is,” Xander said, anguished. “You want me to leave her, again?”

“I’m sorry, Xander,” Buffy said, closing her eyes and hearing Andrew tell them about Anya’s death, seeing the red seeping through Tara’s shirt. “Just outside the apartment door, alright, and we can come back.”

“Tara – is alive here too. We think this is an alternate universe,” said Willow beside him. “Not ours.”

“So?” Xander asked desperately. “We can stay here – we can stay with them. That’s where we belong.”

Willow’s brows drew together at that last sentence, but she wasn’t arguing with him. She looked like she agreed. Buffy didn’t know how to tell them no, not when she wanted to stay here too, in this comforting apartment, with Tara and Anya, see if her mom was still –

“We don’t know where here is,” Spike interrupted. “Is that even Anya, or is it a very convincing impersonation? We don’t know. She wakes up, what are you gonna say to her? You got any proof you’re Xander from an alternate universe? What if she asks you a question you can’t answer?”

“He’s right,” Buffy said. “Come on.” And Dawn, where was Dawn? She hadn’t come with them, she was alone at the hotel. Buffy felt a stirring of panic. Angel and Cordelia would look after her, of course, but who knew what was going on there?

With one last look at Anya, Xander followed them out of the room and out of the apartment, closing the door behind them but not locking it. He leaned against the back of the door and stared at his hands. Willow stayed next to him, their shoulders touching.

“I got nothing,” Faith said, after a few moments of silence. “Don’t even know what I was doing there in the first place.”

“I think,” Willow began, “I think I know...Buffy, what is that on your shoulder?”

Buffy frowned, looking down, and picked out a grey thread.

“That was on you during the spell,” Willow said grimly. “And it still is, despite the fact that none of us are wearing the same clothes.”

“Except for him,” Faith said, nodding at Spike.

“Naturally,” Willow said. “But don’t you see? There’s a reason that thread is still here. It must not have belonged in our world, or in this one. What is that, Buffy?”

Buffy shook her head, looking down at the grey thread in her hand. A memory hit her, William’s gentle hands draping a jacket over her shoulders. “I think,” she said slowly, “it’s from William’s suit.”

“From _what_?” Spike exclaimed indignantly.

Buffy gave him an impatient look. “He just thought I might need something to cover up, that’s all, nothing else, so he put his jacket on me, but I took it off, and – ” Why was she defending herself? “He’s _you_!”

“He bloody well is not!” Spike said hotly, looking betrayed.

“Not the point,” Willow interrupted hastily. “I didn’t think this would matter, but it clearly does. The point of the spell is that we’re all anchors to the alternate universe Spike and Cordelia’s worlds. They have a connection to us, but we don’t have a connection to them. Or, we’re not _supposed_ to. If we do, then that changes things. Did anyone else touch any of the Spikes or Cordelias?”

Buffy coughed awkwardly, feeling embarrassed. “Well, I held hands with the Spike from the world where I was dead – ”

“You _what_?” Spike said, affronted. “You held hands with that wanker? What, you just throwin’ yourself at every alternate universe version of me that exists?”

Buffy glared at him, conscious of everyone else watching them. “Shut up. I was just comforting him and telling him to take care of Dawn.”

Spike grumbled something under his breath, crossing his arms. “Well, some of ’em punched me when they first got here.”

“Randy clapped me on the shoulder,” Xander said, making a face. Spike made a face back.

“One of the Spikes hugged me,” Faith offered. “Said we were close in that world.”

Buffy swallowed down a pang of jealousy.

“And the Slayer Cordelia hugged me,” said Willow, looking resigned. “I didn’t think that would have any impact on the spell. It shouldn’t have, unless we feel connected to them.”

“I talked to Randy. And I had a conversation with Chase,” Buffy said, wincing. “About Glory, and some other stuff. Felt pretty connected to them. And William, and the other Spike. And another Spike.” Spike scoffed, and she glowered at him. The tension between them, their last argument unfinished, made it really hard to remember why she wasn’t dragging him and pushing him up against a wall, palm pressed flat against his chest, holding him in place to kiss or kill him. Either one.

“It’s not just Buffy,” Xander said, like he was trying to save her from her utter mortification. “I talked to one of the Cordelias. We were still together in her world.”

“Me too,” Willow said. “With...well, with, the Cordy in love with Buffy.”

“What?” Buffy said, aghast.

“She goes to UC Sunnydale with us and we’re friends and you guys are dating!” Willow rationalized. “And Oz is still there. And still here apparently.”

“I talked to that girl version of me,” Spike mumbled, putting a hand to the back of his neck. “She’s alright.”

Buffy opened her mouth, reconsidered, and closed it.

“Sorry to disappoint, but I didn’t connect with any of ’em,” Faith said dryly. “Well, there was one Spike, pretty relatable about some shit, but – ”

“It’s enough,” Willow said, shaking her head. “We confused the whole spell.”

“And Dawn,” Buffy remembered. “The Spike who came over to her, remember, to check if she was alright? She had a connection to him. She was the source of the spell. Why wouldn’t she have come with us? Is she – Wil, please tell me she’s alright – ”

“She should be,” Willow reassured her. Buffy let out a long sigh of relief, mirrored by Spike. “She was in the center, and she didn’t say anything, unlike the rest of us. She was a power source. She opened the doors, but she didn’t come through with us. She must still be at the hotel, with our bodies.”

Xander looked down. “These aren’t our bodies?”

“No,” Willow said. “These are _their_ bodies. The us who live in this world. Our minds, our spirits, are inhabiting their bodies. I guess they’re just sort of asleep in here.”

“Well, that’s creepy,” Xander remarked.

“It was you that made me think about it, Xander,” said Willow. “You said that this is where we belong, with, with Tara, and Anya. We said that in the spell, send them back where they belong. And if we each had different ideas about where we belonged, tokens from alternate universes, were touched by people, or, or vampires, from alternate universes...then the spell would have misunderstood. I think it sent the Spikes and Cordelias and Fred each back to their universe – I’m hoping anyway, but it also tried to figure out where we belong, and randomly sent us here.”

“How do we get back?” Spike asked.

Willow’s face fell. “I have no idea.”

Buffy had the feeling she wasn’t that upset about not knowing, and couldn’t really blame her.

“Willow,” Faith said, her hand reaching forward and stopping a fraction away from Willow’s face. “That rose is still in your hair.”

Willow looked at Faith in a way Buffy couldn’t quite decipher, and reached her hand gingerly into her hair.

“Don’t touch it!” Xander said, panicked.

“I wasn’t going to,” Willow said, bringing the rose out of her hair with a twist of her hands and a muttered spell, till it was floating hand-level in front of them all.

Buffy frowned. “How come it didn’t fall out?”

“Same reason that thread is still with you,” Willow said, nodding towards William’s thread in her hand and floating the rose back in her hair.

“Should I keep it?”

“Maybe,” Willow said, a crinkle between her eyebrows. “For now. If I ever find whoever cast the spell on this thing, oh, I’m gonna – well, _not_ rip off their skin, but. Give them a serious talking-to.”

“Question is if they knew this could happen,” Spike said, tense. “If they did, Peaches and his band of merry not-so-good-doers are at the hotel alone. With Dawn.”

Willow shook her head. “I don’t think they would have, but God, I don’t know.”

“We should see if Giles is here,” Buffy said, wrapping William’s thread around her fingers. “He might believe us and know how to help.”

“Assuming he hasn’t buggered off to London, that is,” Spike said.

“And we’ll head to my house,” Buffy went on. “There should be clues there for what’s different about this world, and the only person there should be Dawn. Or – or my mom. If she’s…”

“Dawn might not be there either,” said Willow gently. “If the monks never – ”

“We’ll at least be able to find out who we are here,” Buffy cut her off, trying not to think about it.

“You want us to leave,” Xander said, face blank.

“Look, we can come back after we know something, _anything_ ,” Buffy said. “It seems like it’s night, and we’ve been up all day, and had our flight before. It’s probably smart to come back here and go to sleep, but not if any one of them in there asks us a question we have no idea how to answer.”

“And if one of them wakes up now and sees us missing?”

“Leave a note for Anya, tell her you’re helping me slay or something – ”

“May not know about that, pet,” Spike pointed out.

“What if demons don’t even exist here?” Willow wondered.

“Hello, _vampire_ ,” said Spike, putting a finger to his pulse. “I’m still dead.”

“Just tell her you guys are helping me with something,” Buffy interjected. “We could stop at the Magic Box, too, see if it’s still owned by Anya.”

Guilt flashed across Willow’s face at the mention of the Magic Box, but once Xander came back out of the apartment, they made their way out into Sunnydale.

They checked the Magic Box, closed up but looking similar to the one they had known, and agreed to come back to it the next day, though Faith and Spike suggested breaking in (ultimately vetoed). Giles’s apartment was locked, but she didn’t see his car so it was safe to assume he wasn’t in town, and she didn’t think he’d be very eager to help them if they broke into his apartment at around two in the morning.

Still, Buffy couldn’t help treasuring it, the familiar walk to her house: the sounds of scuffles from demon bars and regular ones, a car beeping repeatedly, the cemeteries she’d always gone through on patrol, the faint chill of the night.

Spike noticed her shivering, and shoved his duster over her shoulders brusquely. Buffy inhaled in smoke and leather, feeling warmer even though Spike’s coat was room temperature. She shot him an amused, knowing look, but before either one of them could say anything, they’d reached Revello Drive.

Willow reached over to squeeze her hand. Buffy stared up at her house. It held a lot of not-so-great memories, really, of the Potentials crowding every room, and the stress and worry of all of last year. All the years since her mom had died. She hadn’t even been able to stand looking at that house, living in it, the year she’d come back from heaven. It’d been so expensive and big that she’d thought about just selling it. Anya had told her about all the complications, and she’d eventually given the idea up. And it was Mom’s house, the last piece of Mom she’d had. Maybe Buffy had never been able to keep it as nice and well-kept as her mom had, but she’d tried.

Then it had been gone, and she’d almost been relieved. Now, searching in this Buffy’s sweatpants for keys and opening the door, walking inside, she was more relieved to be able to see it one more time. All the pictures of her, Mom, and Dawn, the furniture that her mom had picked out especially, and their old television.

“It’s all the same,” Buffy said softly, brushing a hand over the couch. “Dawn’s in the pictures.”

“Then what is different?” Xander asked, but she didn’t hear him. She was rushing upstairs, checking the doors. Dawn in one room, snoring with her hair spread out against her pillow. It didn’t tell her much, except that this version of herself was alright letting Dawn stay home alone, which meant no Glory. Buffy moved inside and gave her a kiss on her forehead, before closing the door gently behind her.

Her mom wasn’t in any of the rooms.

Buffy sagged against the doorway of her mom’s room, and let herself cry for a couple of minutes before wiping her face. Inside it looked like Willow and Tara’s room when she’d come back from heaven. She passed it by and moved to her room: comfortingly the same in all its teenage girl gloriousness.

Buffy looked around for anything out of place, and froze. She strode over to her mirror and grabbed three of the pictures she’d stuck to the frame, hurrying downstairs. The four of them were huddled over what looked like a newspaper. They turned when they saw her, Spike raising one scarred eyebrow.

“This is something different,” she said, holding up the pictures.

Faith snatched one from her and held it up: a Polaroid of Lorne, posing next to Oz, standing beside Gunn, who had his arm around a grinning Buffy, who was pressing a kiss to Spike’s cheek, who was smirking at the camera in a mirror image of Faith beside him.

Buffy passed around the second picture, an adorable one of Spike with Dawn, laughing, riding on his back. They were standing in Spike’s crypt, Buffy sitting on the sarcophagus beside them.

The last picture was of Buffy giving the camera a smile, sitting on the hood of Spike’s old DeSoto at night, legs stretched out with Faith smoking next to her. Spike was leaning against the car with an unlit cigarette in his mouth, insouciant and cocky, his head tilted toward Buffy’s thigh: the two of them ivory and gold in the moonlight.

It hurt to look at them. She almost wished, as Spike passed them to her tenderly, that the pictures were really hers.

“Yeah,” Xander said, “we kind of figured that out.” He handed her the newspaper they’d been looking at, one small paragraph and picture circled in red.

Buffy squinted at the picture, a black and white photograph in what looked like a stage. Someone singing into the microphone, easily distinguished by his pointy horns and fabulous suit – Lorne. Beside him, Spike in black leather with a microphone and a guitar strapped to his chest. Gunn with a keyboard, Faith and Oz with guitars. And that was definitely her, in the back on the drums. She skimmed the paragraph, about a performance in L.A. by –

“Mortal Enemies,” Buffy read, and lasted until she looked up and saw Spike’s face before she’d started to laugh hysterically. He lasted until he heard her giggle before he was laughing too. The newspaper fell down in a flurry of paper down to the floor. They both clutched at each other like it didn’t matter anymore that they were meant to be in a fight, or that he was a colossal idiot, or that he didn’t understand why he was a colossal idiot, or that she wasn’t sure if he still loved her. She was laughing so hard it was painful, turning her face into Spike’s chest.

Willow, Xander, and Faith looked at them blankly.

“Wanna share with the class?” Xander said, staring.

“I’m...in a...rock band,” Buffy wheezed, “with Spike here.”

“She plays the triangle,” Spike said, catching on and grinning.

“Drums,” Buffy corrected, clutching her stomach.

“Drums, yeah,” Spike said, “she’s uh, hell on the old skins.”

“Are they possessed?” Xander asked Willow. “I’m 99% sure they’re possessed.”

“Sorry,” Buffy managed to get out between peals of laughter. “It’s just – I told my mom – ” She straightened up, out of breath. “Well, it’s kind of – it’s kind of an inside joke.”

“Oooookay,” Willow said, while Xander seemed to have lost his ability to speak, and seemed to think it was best just to move on. “Well, we’ve figured out that in this universe you’re somehow in a band with Oz, Spike, Faith, Gunn, and Lorne, but Lorne and Spike are still demons, and I’m guessing Oz is still a werewolf – ”

“I’m pretty sure B and I are still Slayers,” Faith said.

Willow nodded. “Right. Dawn is here, T-Tara and Anya are here, but Angel, Fred, Cordelia, and Wesley are probably still in L.A.? We can’t send ourselves home without Dawn as the Key, and we don’t know if Giles is here or if he can help us.”

“Basically,” Buffy agreed. “What we were all doing in Xander’s apartment, I don’t know – ”

Willow picked up the newspaper. “I think we were watching you guys perform. It says the performance was taped, and it’s from yesterday. You must have brought it home for us to watch.”

“Then we all fell asleep,” Buffy said, chewing on her lip. “I guess Xander and Anya went to sleep sometime before. But Dawn? She’s here.”

“We might’ve brought her with us to L.A.,” Spike suggested. “So she didn’t need to watch it again.”

 _We._ Buffy tried not to smile. “Yeah, we must have.” She looked around at the too-familiar house. “Wil, why don’t you and Xander head back to his apartment for the night. The couch and armchair aren’t really great places to sleep, and I’d rather be here to keep an eye on Dawn. Faith and Spike can stay here. We can all get some sleep and meet back here in the morning.”

Willow and Xander nodded, looking eager, and left, leaving Buffy with Spike and Faith. A potentially awkward combo, especially considering that in this world the three of them were somehow in a band together and seemed to be best friends. But Buffy dealt with it. She set Faith up in Willow and Tara’s room, figuring they wouldn’t mind and not caring if they did since it was, you know, her house.

Once she’d closed that door, there was Spike.

He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans, reminding her she was still wearing his duster. “I, er,” Spike said, “my crypt – ”

“Oh, yeah, we should check if it’s still here,” Buffy said automatically, and then flushed. “Oh, you meant – to sleep there. Right.”

Spike was looking at her with naked hope on his face. “You wanted me to stay?”

And she just couldn’t deal with this. How couldn’t he see? All of today, and he hadn’t realized yet? Of course she had wanted him to stay, but if she stayed here right now, in this hallway with him looking at her like _that_ , asking questions like _that_ , she was going to fucking kill him. Or just plain fuck him.

Buffy blew out a frustrated breath. “Yeah, _duh_ I wanted you to stay. But you know what, the basement’s got a cot, and you can check your crypt if that’s what you want.” She walked away, footsteps leading her blindly to the back porch. She opened the door and sat down, pulling Spike’s duster around her tightly, feeling herself breathe.

The back of her neck prickled.

“Never thought I’d be here again,” Spike said, sitting down beside her and drawing his knees up to his chest.

Buffy thought of her dream. It felt like years ago now. “Me neither.”

“Missed it, a bit.” Spike paused, hand steadied on his knee. “That wasn’t what I wanted, you know. I just didn’t wanna, assume, or – ”

“Well you can,” said Buffy, painfully relieved. “Assume, I mean.”

“Alright,” Spike said.

She hadn’t been able to sleep for weeks without him after she’d thought he’d died. Maybe it was selfish but all she wanted to do now was collapse in her own bed with him.

They sat together for a few moments, in that companionable silence she’d missed so much, the breeze picking up around them and the stars bright in the dark.

“You know what I want,” Spike said quietly. “You don’t need to wonder.”

“I don’t know,” Buffy said, her heartbeat picking up. “I don’t – ” Maybe it was time to tell him again, but she didn’t think she could bear it if he didn’t believe her again.

Something strange was happening – she tried to focus, open her mouth – Spike was getting blurrier and blurrier – she braced her hands on the porch, saw William’s thread tied tightly around her finger – and her eyes dropped shut.

▬▬▬▬▬▬

Wood and debris on the floor, faint light streaming in from windows above, and clothes thrown every which way; a mouth sucking on a bruise above her silk tank top, a hand under her long black skirt, fingering her deftly and making her moan so that her head fell back against a slender collarbone. The owner of the collarbone kissed her harshly, pulling her hair back, and licked a long stripe against her throat.

Buffy gasped and felt herself come, opened her eyes fully, and went still. Spike, his hand under her skirt and his mouth on her chest, froze like he had been caught putting his hand in the cookie jar. Faith, behind her, was rigidly motionless, her tongue still on Buffy’s neck.

“Um,” Buffy said. The bruise above her shirt burned and her mouth was stinging.

Spike drew his hand back, which made every muscle in Buffy’s body protest, moved away his other hand, which was pinching her waist tightly, and carefully moved his mouth away. Faith removed her tongue. Buffy hastily took away her hands, one around Spike’s neck and one on Faith’s leg, and put them in her lap.

“Um,” Buffy said again, and fought the urge to bring them both back, because she really was not finished here –

“Sorry,” Spike said tightly, looking at the ceiling and absolutely nowhere else.

“Alternate universe,” said Faith, very firmly. One of her legs was pressed against Spike’s thigh. She hastily moved it back. None of them looked at Spike’s lap.

“Right,” Buffy said. “Definitely an alternate universe.” She looked around, frowning, and winced. “Oh.”

“Oh?” Faith said, sounding incredibly interested.

Buffy looked at Spike, who was still looking at the ceiling. “I’ve been here before.”

“You the one that brought the house down?” Faith said.

“With some help,” Spike answered dryly, and stood up, offering his hand down to Buffy absently before looking down at what was on his hand and quickly bringing it back.

Buffy scrambled up, smoothing down her skirt and pulling up the strap of her tank top. Her whole body ached. She had no idea how they’d gone from her house to this one, and her brain was too orgasm-happy and fried to think rationally about it.

She was sure she’d never forget this house, but she’d never expected to be back here. And Faith – she pressed a finger to her swollen mouth.

She looked away awkwardly while Spike did his jeans up and Faith put on a shirt.

Spike coughed. “Er, Slayer?” When Buffy and Faith both looked at him, he amended, “Buffy,” and held out a pair of her panties.

Which was the moment Willow chose to make her entrance, calling out their names and pushing away strips of wood. She stopped short in front of them and stared.

Buffy was extremely aware of what it looked like: the house fallen down around them, Spike shirtless in his jeans with his fluffy sex hair and scratch marks on his chest, Faith in her jeans and ripped black top with smudged lipstick, Buffy covered in bruises and hickeys, their remaining clothes tossed haphazardly around the room, and of course, the underwear dangling from Spike’s fingers.

“Is that…” Willow gaped at Spike. “Is that Buffy’s underwear?”

“No-o,” Spike said. “This is...obviously...mine.”

Buffy resisted the urge to slap her forehead.

“Yours,” Willow said flatly.

“Yeah,” Spike said, lifting his chin up. “And this was all just…”

“A fight,” supplied Faith. “Three of us must have got into a nasty argument.”

Well, that was probably the truth.

“Right,” said Willow, raising her eyebrows. “That’s all.”

“ _Well_.” Spike bristled. “You don’t need to be so doubtful about it, Red. What, you don’t believe me? I _thought_ you might not be as judgemental about – certain people and the way they might like to dress – you know, I don’t appreciate that tone, and – and how do you know what the Slayer’s underwear looks like anyway, huh? Is there something I should know?” At Buffy and Willow’s twin looks of exasperation, he deflated.

“Yeah, so we were screwing each other all night. Our alternate selves were, I mean. I’m assuming,” Faith said, not looking directly at any of them. “In this alternate universe. That we are not responsible for in any way. So. It wasn’t our fault.”

“Yeah,” Spike said, nodding. “What she said. And what were we doin’ here in the first place?”

“Yeah, explanations please,” Buffy said, swallowing down her embarrassment. “One minute we were at my house, the next we were here. We didn’t even get to sleep.” Alright, she was bitter about that part. “And how did you find us, Wil?”

“Uhhh,” Willow said, looking mortified and a bit apologetic. “I was in the Magic Box and people reported, um, screaming. Coming from here.”

Buffy winced. “Oh.”

“I’ll explain,” Willow said, seeming to think changing the subject was the best thing to do. “Spike, could you, um. Just put on a shirt and...put those away, and we could talk about this outside?”

“Right,” Spike said, then, “No. Sunlight. I can’t go outside.”

“Oh!” Willow said. “Sorry. I’ll get Xander, he’s just at the Magic Box.”

After she’d left, the three of them stood in awkward silence again. Spike turned around and started rummaging around for his shirt and duster.

Buffy watched the muscles in his back flex, cursed Willow for bringing up a shirt, and quickly turned away. Turning away meant she caught Faith’s eye, which meant she quickly looked away and focused on the broken walls. She tried fixing her hair, and tugging up her tank top. Thought about finding the jeans jacket she remembered being somewhere around here – the shirt she’d worn on top of her camisole had been ripped to shreds, she remembered that – , but that would require moving, and moving could lead to eye contact. So she stayed in her spot, thighs sticking together uncomfortably with dried come, and thought hysterically that if she hadn’t known Willow was coming back, she would be dragging both Spike and Faith down right now.

Willow returned, Xander in tow, before Buffy could give in and do just that. Thankfully Xander didn’t raise any questions about their appearance, and just nodded at her.

Spike moved forward, behind her shoulder, in his duster and shirt. She wanted desperately to – she wanted. She cast him a side-long look and saw that same naked want reflected on his face, what they had done here in their world. She was heady with the memory, the aching of her body, the phantom feeling of his fingers inside her. 

“Xander and I were in his apartment,” Willow was saying, “when we suddenly, boop, ended up here. Me, with Amy in some seedy club. Him, in the Magic Box with Anya. Far as I can tell, we’re back in time to when Buffy first – when I took her out of heaven, except Faith is here.” Willow’s expression wavered. “That means I – I’ve just been the stupidest person ever and Tara’s not t-talking to me, and I haven’t really learned to control my magic, so we should probably get out of here.”

“But how?” Buffy shook her head. “I don’t understand how we even got here.”

“I’ve got a theory,” Willow began, and then exchanged a rueful look with Buffy and Xander.

“It could be bunnies?” Xander quipped, smiling with one side of his mouth. He looked down at the floor, blinking too fast.

“Our spirits and minds don’t belong in any of these worlds,” Willow went on, “so they’re kind of kicking us out after a while, so that the real Willows and Xanders and all can come back to their world in their bodies.”

“We were in the first world for what, half an hour?” Faith said.

“Exactly,” Willow said. “I guess that’s the cut-off point. We can’t stay in any of these worlds for any longer than that, which means we don’t have enough time to tell anyone and get their help.”

“So we’re just going to keep getting kicked out and end up in random worlds?” Buffy asked. “We can’t do that. And what if we’re not all in the same place? What if Faith’s in L.A. and Spike’s in South America and I’m dead?”

Xander pointed a finger at her. “Great point, Buffster. The likelihood of at least one of us being dead is alarmingly high. What happens then?”

“I don’t think we’d end up in the worlds where we’re dead,” Willow said slowly. “This thing – ” She drew the rose out of her hair. “Is enchanted by the spell we did now. So it’s trying to send us where it thinks we belong, remember? Bring them home. And plus, right now our bodies are sitting in the Hyperion, all connected to each other through the spell, and our hands.”

“So if we’re not in the same place – ” Buffy started.

“Probably we’d all get yanked _into_ the same place from wherever we were before,” Willow finished. “That, or we’d have to search the globe to find each other. And if our time runs out, then we’d all end up somewhere different again, maybe the same place or maybe not, so it doesn’t matter that much. Also.” She made a face. “I think if we did end up in the worlds where we’re dead, and I don’t think we will, then our dead bodies will wake up, because our spirit is back in those bodies.”

“Okay, horrifying!” Xander said.

“Well we can’t just wait around hoping we miraculously end up in our world,” Spike said.

Faith shook her head. “Wait, if we end up in our world, would we be able to stay there?”

“Probably,” Willow said, which was not as reassuring as she seemed to think it was. “I mean, we’re getting kicked out because we’re not in our own bodies. If we landed in our own bodies, we wouldn’t get kicked out.”

“But there are _hundreds_ of worlds,” Buffy said. “Spike’s right, we can’t just be waiting around for half an hour to finish. We have no idea where we could end up. We have to get home, to Dawn – ” Buffy came to a halt, looking at the rose floating in mid-air thoughtfully.

“What is it?” Willow asked.

“One of the petals is black,” Buffy said.

Willow’s eyes went round. She looked at the rose, grabbed it by the hand, and picked off the petal that had turned black.

Xander made a squeaky little screech. “Wil, you just – touched that – an evil vampire Willow is gonna come out of there – ” He paused. “Hey. Nothing’s happening. Why’s nothing happening?”

“We’re not in our world, and that’s the world the rose was designed for,” Willow said. “My hand right here is this alternate universe Willow’s hand, not mine. I think the Spikes and Cordelias back at the hotel would have been able to touch the rose too, we just never tried.” She looked at the black petal one more time, and muttered, “ _Incendere._ ”

The petal went up in flames, and the world tilted beneath Buffy’s feet.

▬▬▬▬▬▬

She opened her eyes in a bed, sunlight trickling in through a window, and someone's arm tossed over her stomach, a head against her chest.

Faith yawned, saw Buffy, and scrambled out of bed, looking shell-shocked with bed sheets falling in a pile at her feet. She was wearing a loose tank top and pajama shorts that Buffy recognized as her own, softer without her makeup and just woken up from sleep.

“We have got to stop meeting like this,” Buffy said, rubbing her hands over her eyes, but it wasn’t very funny. The demolished house was one thing, this was another. Too gentle, too comfortable. Buffy looked around at the eerily familiar room.

Oh.

She recognized the furniture, the dresser, some of the picture frames. This was her mom’s room. But it was her mom’s room with pictures of her and Faith and Dawn, all together and smiling happily at the camera. Her mom’s room that she apparently shared with _Faith._

This was seriously new levels of wackiness.

“We’re – ” Faith glanced around. “This isn’t possible.”

Buffy picked up a picture frame on the dresser next to the bed. Her and Faith kissing each other in front of some restaurant, looking peaceful and – in love, Buffy thought.

“I think we’re together here,” Buffy said.

“How can you be so calm about all this?” Faith demanded, walking over to her and snatching up the picture. Her scowl faded as soon as she caught sight of their smiles.

“It’s just another alternate universe,” Buffy said, mystified.

Faith scoffed. “Right. Yeah. In what universe could this possibly be happening? Us, living together, in your mom’s house, with Dawnie, me sleeping in your bed – how could this have happened?”

“Maybe,” Buffy said, “maybe if you had never killed that man.”

Faith flinched back like Buffy had slapped her.

“Faith, I’m sorry,” Buffy said, “I just. I’m just trying to figure this out. It’s not our world, you don’t need to – ”

“It’s not about that!” Faith said, collapsing down on the sleep-rumpled bed and staring at her knees. “Look, B...I’m not that girl who killed that man anymore, but – part of me is always gonna be her, and I remember how she felt. You were my first real friend, and I – I never woulda dared dream about this – now, seeing it – it’s not about alternate universes.”

Buffy’s voice came out as a bare whisper. “What’s it about then?”

“I know we’re never gonna be real close,” Faith said. “But there was something there. There’s always been something there.”

Oh.

That wasn’t something that she’d ever thought about, because it wasn’t something she should have thought about. It wasn’t something that she was, because she was weird enough already with the whole Slayer thing, except it kind of was. There was Angel, and an influx of cute and stupid boys in high school, then Parker, Riley, Spike...But if she was thinking about it...there was Faith, watching her slay vampires and dance in the Bronze that last year of high school, asking Buffy to Homecoming and giving her a high-five after patrol, before it had all gone to hell. Even then, there was Faith’s knife pressed to her throat and the vicious kiss she’d pressed to Buffy’s forehead, the look in her eyes when Buffy stuck that knife in, and the gut-wrenching feeling Buffy’d gotten in that church, returning to her own body. _Something there._ And just before, her tongue on Buffy’s throat, waking up in bed beside her. The Cordelia in love with her, and the girl version of Spike.

It would have been a lot easier, Buffy thought, disgruntled, if she’d figured this out in college and gotten to date one of the cute girls in her English classes in a relationship that didn’t end in total tragedy.

Buffy stepped forward, sat down beside Faith. She reached one finger out to tilt Faith’s head toward her, and leaned in to kiss her once, briefly, softly, Faith’s hair tickling her neck and her hand coming to rest at Faith’s jaw.

Faith looked at her, guarded, when she’d pulled away. “What was that for?”

“The something there,” Buffy said, and smiled, shrugging her shoulders.

Faith let out a breath of laughter. “Yeah.”

“We missed our chance, I guess,” Buffy said thoughtfully, looking at the picture Faith had tossed on the bed. They’d always meant something to each other, the only two girls in the world: she could have loved Kendra, and she’d gotten the chance to love Faith, but it had all been tangled up in hate and desire. This Buffy and Faith must have gotten it right. “They didn’t.”

They sat on the bed for a moment, in perfectly understanding silence.

Faith looked at her. “Do me a favor, B.”

“Yeah?”

“I never seen anyone look at you the way your vampire does,” she said. “We missed our chance, all those years ago. Don’t miss it again with him. Don’t throw it away.”

The corners of Buffy’s mouth tilted up. “I’ll try not to. Come on, let’s go find Willow and ask her what was up with the whole pyro-maniac act.”

They found Willow downstairs, looking curiously at all the family pictures that included Faith, standing with Xander and Spike.

“Hey, Buffy,” Willow said, turning to see her. Her eyebrows shot up when she saw Faith’s attire and she gave Buffy a look that said, _we will be discussing this later, you better give me all the details._ “Good news,” she went on, beaming, “Spike’s crypt is completely empty and nothing like his at all, with none of his stuff, but he found himself there anyways! Which means I was right, and he ended up here because the rest of us are here, even if he’s actually supposed to be somewhere else.”

“And the whole fire thing?” Buffy asked, waving a hand at the rose in Willow’s hand.

“Well I figured if each petal represents an alternate universe, then the black petal must be the universe we’re in,” Willow said. “If I destroy the petal, then we’re kicked out of the world quicker than we would be normally, and sent to another one.”

“Keep burning them off because one of ’em’s got to be ours,” Faith said, nodding.

“So, now our plan is to keep burning off all those petals just hoping we’ll end up in our world,” Buffy said skeptically.

“Well, basically,” Willow said.

“A pretty solid plan compared to many others from the past,” Xander commented. “Who here remembers just driving out of Sunnydale in a trailer driven by an insufferable vampire in the middle of the day?”

“Good times,” Spike said, quirking up an eyebrow.

“What if years have passed since we’ve been in our world?” Buffy pressed, thinking of Dawn.

“I don’t think it’ll be that long,” Willow said. “A month at the most.” She shrugged helplessly. “Besides, what else are we going to do? We could read the Magic Box’s books for half an hour at a time, assuming we can find it here – ”

“Ugh,” Buffy said, making a face. “Let’s go with your first plan.”

And Willow ripped off the new black petal of the rose in her hand, and murmured, “ _Incendere_.”

▬▬▬▬▬▬

It was night, dirt under her feet and graves beside her. A swift punch delivered to her face sent her toppling to the ground before she jumped back up and punched her assailant in the face twice. Another blow was directed at her; she blocked it with the kind of ease she’d used to have performing new cheerleading moves. She spun around and kicked him to the floor, and when he got up in a matter of seconds, rushed up at him and wrapped her legs around her attacker’s neck, choking him for a brief few seconds.

Spike grinned up at her, wild with blood on his mouth, and said, hoarse through her hold on his neck, “Don’t think we get on much in this world.”

“This was our version of getting along once,” Buffy said, shrugging, and flipped backwards, landing on her feet.

They circled each other warily, like animals, Spike wiping away blood gushing from his nose.

“Your nose okay?” Buffy asked.

“Yeah, ’s not broken,” Spike said.

“Oh, good,” said Buffy, and then leaped at him.

Spike caught her hands before she could manage another punch, twisted her arm to the side and turned her against him. “You got something needs working out, pet?”

“Nah,” Buffy said, breathless, “I just missed this.”

And she had, fighting or dancing or both. The way a quick kick directed towards the back of his leg behind her sent him tumbling down, but back up, always back up, bouncing in place and watching her move. Fighting with Spike had never been like fighting with anyone else. He’d always been the one sparring partner, whether it was exchanging blows or barbs, that could keep up with her. 

“But actually,” Buffy went on conversationally, “now that you mention it, I would like to know – ” A punch, blocked, a kick that ended in her leg being held up in the air by his hand. She pushed her foot against his chest until he staggered back. “Why you ever thought I wouldn’t want to know – ” Another strike to his face, and he’d grabbed hold of her arm so it wavered in the air. “That hey, you’re actually – ” She pushed his hand away and stepped on his foot. He stepped on hers. They both stumbled, grabbing hold of each other for balance. They ended up on the ground, rolling around until she felt the hard dirt beneath her and he was braced on top of her, eyes bright blue and hands beside her head. “Alive,” Buffy finished, winded, staring up at him.

He was hard against her and she was so turned on it was painful, hot and pressing up against each other. For a moment she thought he was going to kiss her, but he rolled away instead, standing up and offering her his hand.

Buffy ignored the hand and kicked herself up, landing flat on her feet. They looked at each other, eyes hungry, Spike licking his lips. Before she could stop herself, she’d burst out with, “Do you not love me anymore?”

And immediately wanted to crawl under the dirt and stay there forever. Wow, how pathetic was that. She flushed, crossing her arms. Both of them stood a distance away from each other, in the dark in the graveyard, signs of their scuffle still present in Spike’s messed up hair and the twigs on Buffy’s shirt.

Even saying it out loud had been wrong, the idea that Spike didn’t love her. She never doubted that, not ever. Things changed all the time, and mothers died, and Watchers left, and friends turned evil and kicked her out of her house, but Spike loved her. Or at least, he said he loved her, he was trying to, he thought he did, whatever excuse she’d used to tell herself. That was a constant, unchanging, ever-lasting. She hadn’t doubted it since the first time she’d kissed him of her own volition, beaten and bruised for her sake.

“Of course I love you,” Spike said, bewildered, “you daft bint. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Well, I thought.” Buffy swallowed, dusting dirt off her pants. There was a stake in her pocket. She took it out and twirled it around absently. “That you didn’t want me to know you were alive, because you moved on, or. Which is a thing people do.”

“Have. You. _Completely_ lost your marbles?” Spike said. “I could never stop loving you and I’d never want to. _You’re_ the one who’s meant to have moved on!”

Buffy’s temper flared. “Me move on? Why would I move on?”

Spike looked a bit taken aback. “Well, you know, live your life, with the little bit and your friends.”

“Without you.”

Spike was frowning. “Yeah.”

“I don’t _want_ to live without you!” Buffy exploded, throwing the stake to the ground and marching over to him so that they were mere inches apart. “I can do it! Yeah, I can live without you, I’d survive, I could be happy, remember you, and maybe eventually I’d fall in love again or whatever! I don’t _want_ to! So stop being all noble and self-sacrificing or whatever, because I like my life better when you’re in it!”

Spike looked speechless, which was a first. Buffy crossed her arms and glared at him.

“Why?” he said.

“Because I’m in love with you, you stupid idiot!” Buffy shouted. Quieter, she said, “I love you.”

Spike was shaking his head. “No, you, you didn’t mean that. You can’t love me, after what I did, everything I’ve done, what I tried to do to you – ” He shuddered. “No.”

“It’s not up to you to decide that!” Buffy said, eyes bright with tears. “Not you, or Xander, or Dawn or anyone, it’s up to me. It’s something that happened to me. I’m not an idiot, and I can take care of myself. If I thought you’d _ever_ do that again I’d stake you right here. I _trust you_. Do you trust me?”

 _Come on, please_. All that last year she’d thought they’d built up their trust, had each other’s back, been partners. They’d always been their best as a team. Now –

But Spike didn’t even hesitate. “Of course I do,” he said.

“Do you believe me?”

“I – ” Spike shook his head. “It’s alright, Slayer, I don’t need you to take pity on me.” He looked up, unbearably earnest. “I want you to be happy. You shouldn’t love me.”

“I do,” Buffy said, grabbing hold of his duster and clenching her fist tightly, trying to make him understand. “I love you. Please believe me.”

Spike reached out one hand to stroke her hair, shorter and lighter in this world. His eyes were uncertain, mouth turned down. “Say it again.”

“I love you,” Buffy said, voice breaking.

Spike’s mouth turned up into a brilliant smile. “I believe you.”

Buffy pulled him down by his duster to kiss him, and the world shuddered beneath them and gave way.

▬▬▬▬▬▬

A hand on the small of her back, a hand in her right hand, her left hand resting on a wiry shoulder, a sparkling chandelier above her. She was held down by the weight of her skirts, green gauze, with a too-tight bodice decorated in lace. She felt her body moving automatically, carrying through the steps her partner was leading her through in time to the sound of the music. Beside her, couples were following the same movements amidst the faint chatter of men with top hats and women in elaborate dresses with jewels hanging from their necks.

Buffy looked up, panicked, and was relieved to recognize Spike, except he didn’t look much like Spike at all. Eyebrows drawn together in confusion, but no scar; a head of honey-colored curls; wearing a fitted dress coat and a white-collared shirt underneath. And he looked younger, which she wouldn’t have said was possible yesterday. If it even was yesterday. Who knew what time it was in their own world, if they’d ever get back?

“Spike?” Buffy whispered.

“Yeah,” Spike said, looking down at her with a faint smile. “Is this a dream?”

“No,” Buffy said, “it must be William’s world.”

“Can’t be. You were never alive in that ponce’s world,” Spike pointed out.

“Well, I don’t know then,” Buffy said, looking around. “Spike.”

“Yeah?”

“I can’t dance.”

“I know, you just stepped on my foot.”

“I’m _so_ sorry,” Buffy hissed, glaring daggers at him. “I _really_ can’t dance. I’ve never done whatever this is!”

“Look,” Spike said, hand tightening on her waist, “I’ve seen you dispatch a nest of fifty vampires in five minutes, Slayer. This is just a waltz. Not even a quadrille. Think we missed that portion of the night.”

“A qua-huh now?”

“Bloody hell,” Spike said, looking up at the ceiling before looking back at her, right at her eyes. “Take a step back with your right foot. A _small_ step. I travel, you pivot, alright? Two more – _small_ – steps in place.” He turned back to face her. “That’s it. Waltzing’s just about keeping the beat. ’S like fighting, really.”

“I prefer fighting,” Buffy said, which made Spike smirk, a filthy look that didn’t belong on his face with what he said next, which was, “Now you travel and I’ll pivot.”

“Pivot,” Buffy repeated and snorted.

“Oi, it’s not funny,” said Spike, looking stern. “Start with your left foot, step to the side – slightly forward – yeah.”

A few more turns and pivots – ha – and Buffy had mostly got the hang of this weird waltzing thing, except her heartbeat kept quickening every time Spike turned back to face her, racing in response to their closeness. She’d told him she loved him and he believed her, so in her book this was the part where they were supposed to be ripping off their clothes. It was so not fair she was being thwarted.

They were the perfect height for each other, and his hand burned on the small of her back.

“Buffy,” Spike said quietly, almost in wonder. “I think I’ve got a heartbeat.”

Buffy abandoned the rules of the waltz and lifted up her hand to touch his pulse, where it beat rapidly against her fingers. “Oh,” she breathed.

For a moment they stayed like that, his expression one of awe and hers of a gift that had just been bestowed onto her. She could hear his heart.

“Put your hand back,” Spike said abruptly, looking around to see if anyone had witnessed their momentary lapse, “these people are vultures.”

Buffy rolled her eyes and put her hand back on his shoulder. “So this must be William’s world, if you’re alive.”

Spike was frowning. “Well, I remember this ball, I think. London 1878, maybe. But there’s no way in hell you were here. You’re not going to be born for another hundred years.”

“Must have been born _really_ early in this world then,” Buffy said.

“Your hair,” Spike started and stopped.

Buffy looked down, alarmed, and saw a dark brown curl falling on her pretty impressive bosom. She felt herself pouting. “I haven’t had my hair this color since I was a kid.”

“It looks nice,” Spike said, staring straight ahead, a muscle clenching in his jaw. When he looked back and saw her pouting, his mouth turned up and he said, softly, almost to himself, “Look at that lip.”

Buffy’s cheeks went pink and she tried to concentrate on the dance. A few moments later she raised up the objection, “I don’t sound British.”

“Could be visiting from America, or British Buffy’s asleep in there and isn’t helpin’ you out with your accent.”

“Maybe this is like a My Fair Lady situation,” Buffy said, mentally humming along to ‘I Could Have Danced All Night’ in her head. “You know, you teach me how to be a proper lady. Have you watched that movie?”

“No one could ever teach you how to be a proper lady and they’d better not try,” Spike said.

“Ethan Rayne did succeed at that once,” Buffy said, grinning up at him. “And I remember you _didn’t_ succeed in your personal task that Halloween.”

Spike rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “I’ve seen that movie. Play’s better. End of the movie’s a disappointment, that bastard Higgins never even changes his behavior. Eliza deserves better. Good soundtrack, though.” He paused, eyes narrowing. “And also we never had this conversation.”

Buffy hid her smile. “Okay. Well, the others must either be here – ”

“Or they don’t exist. Our best bet is just to stay here till the time runs out.”

He turned distractedly in place so that they had changed sides again.

“How come you remember this dance?”

“Drilled into my head,” Spike said. “Was the one thing I actually liked about these balls. Not that I ever did much dancing.”

“You seem pretty good at it to me,” Buffy said.

The music came to a halt and they both stopped, breathing heavily, hands clenched tightly in their places.

Buffy looked at him and looked at him, and he was looking right back. He drew her off into a corner, muttering something that sounded like _screw dance cards_ , and led her through a pair of open doors outside into an empty garden.

“I wanted to watch the sunset without bursting into flames and turning into a big pile of dust,” Spike said, stopping in front of a marble bust by a flower bush and looking up at the sky tentatively like he expected it to burn him. “Bit of a novelty for me.”

“Yeah,” Buffy said softly, leaning against the statue and watching the warm orange glow of the sun on Spike’s face, glinting gold in his hair.

After a moment Spike leaned back with her, and she reached down to intertwine their hands together. He’d always looked like he was breathing, always done it, too, even though he’d never needed to. But now she could hear him, see him, the nervous catch in his throat as soon as their hands touched.

“You live here now, don’t you?” he said, a touch of wistfulness in his voice. “London.”

“Yeah,” Buffy said, and fought to keep her voice neutral. “You wanna come back with me?”

Spike looked at her, startled. She stared back evenly.

“Want?” he said. “There’s nothing I want more.”

Buffy’s shoulders settled. “Oh. Okay. Good.”

“You want me there?”

“I want you there,” Buffy said, squeezing his hand tight.

“Right then,” Spike said. They turned back to watch the sky, a soft pink against the glow of the sun, the breeze blowing Buffy’s dark hair into her face. Spike’s hand was warm in her own, an unfamiliar experience, and the heavy fabric of her dress wasn’t so bad, really. It was pretty.

The sun had just set when someone started calling out, “Elizabeth!” over and over again.

Giles came into view in full formal dress, panting and looking distressed. Hurrying behind him were Willow, red hair in a fancy updo and wearing an ivory ball gown, and Xander in a waistcoat and dress pants.

“Giles?” Buffy said incredulously.

“Where on Earth have you been?” Giles asked, giving Spike a squinty glance and grabbing her by the crook of her elbow. In a lower voice, he went on, “You lack a proper chaperone, Elizabeth, you cannot possibly be out in the gardens alone with a gentleman!”

“Uh,” Buffy managed, and tried not to laugh. She shot a look at Willow and Xander, but they both looked so confused they were no help at all. “Sorry about that?”

Spike had straightened up and nodded at Giles, looking almost nervous. God, this was surreal.

“Mr. Pratt,” Giles said suspiciously, “you’ll excuse us, of course.”

“Er, yeah,” Spike said, rubbing the back of his neck and looking embarrassed.

Giles began leading Buffy away, and she cast a panicked glance back at Spike, Willow, and Xander, which they all returned.

“I must say however I disapprove of you being alone, I do approve of your choice of whom to have a walk-about in the garden with,” Giles was saying. “William Pratt is a fine choice.”

“What?” Buffy said, choking down laughter.

“Oh, only that he’s reasonably well-off and has a reputation for being kind,” Giles said. “You could do far worse.”

Before Buffy could reply to this absolutely hilarious statement or mentally plan out telling her Giles that he’d said this, she felt her corset getting tighter, losing air, and the world went black.

▬▬▬▬▬▬

Four or so worlds went by: one where she woke up in bed next to Riley (weird), one where she got a frightened call from Angel asking her where she’d gone from their bed in the morning (also weird), one that turned out to be the UC Sunnydale Cordelia’s world (weird, but it did let them know that the alternate universe Spike and Cordelias had landed in the right worlds), and one where Sunnydale was on fire and all of them were underground (really gave her the wiggins, but Willow burned the rose petal in a matter of seconds before she could suggest going to see if they could help out).

By the time Buffy had landed in the next one after the apocalypse world, she was exhausted, the air still tasted of ashes, and she had wearily decided that she never wanted to see a rose again.

She hadn’t even gotten to kiss Spike again yet, and dammit, she was going to get home, find Dawn, and drag him away to an empty room for at least a week. If she could just get out of this – castle?

Buffy blinked, coughing to get the taste of fire out of her mouth. The sky above was a forget-me-not blue and to her either side was grass. Lots and lots of grass.

Her movements were clunky and loud. When she looked down she realized it was because she was wearing a coat of silver armour, a sword strapped to her wrist, and her hair, long and golden, curling down her back under a silver helmet. She was holding the reins of a white horse, and standing in front of a stone castle guarded by, holy shit, a real live massive dragon, red-skinned and breathing fire.

“Damn,” Buffy said. Her horse neighed in response. She eyed it affectionately. “I always wanted a pony. I guess dreams really do come true.”

She started walking towards the dragon, one hand on her sword, bringing along her horse, who she’d decided to call Twinkle Feet because that was what she’d wanted to call her pony when she was eight.

“Stay back, Twinkle,” Buffy said, moving the horse back and approaching the dragon warily, holding up her sword.

The dragon saw her coming and stayed still. The doors behind it were swung open, and someone was tied to one door with rope, looking terrified.

“My savior!” Angel cried.

Buffy’s mouth dropped open. “Angel? What are you doing?”

“This evil dragon has kidnapped me from my home!” Angel said, struggling against his rope. “Also, how do you know who I am?”

“I came to save you! According to you, anyway,” Buffy said. “How do you know who I am?”

“Everyone knows of you,” Angel declared dramatically. “Knight Summers, whose parents tragically died, leaving her and her sister an orphan, and who became a knight to provide for her sister, and is now known as the most fearsome knight in all the land!”

“Nah,” Buffy said, grinning. “You’re making me blush.” Apparently she really was Inigo Montoya. She leaned back and surveyed the dragon, flipping her sword over in her hand and feeling its grip. “Most fearsome knight in all the land, huh? I can live with that.”

“Please save me from this horrifying beast,” Angel said.

“Yeah, I got that part. It’s just, why is this horrifying beast not, you know, horrifyingly attacking me?”

It was just watching her instead, wings slumped down and eyes wide.

Buffy frowned, moving closer so that she was standing in front of the dragon. She kept her sword up, ready to – well, honestly she didn’t really know what she was ready to do.

“Hey, Smaug,” Buffy said, “you okay with me freeing him?”

The dragon made a low growling noise.

“Right, you can’t speak,” Buffy said, and cocked her head, looking at the dragon’s eyes. They were blue, bright blue.

“Spike?” Buffy said.

The dragon made another growling noise, but this one sounded assenting, and that almost looked kind of like a nod.

“Oh my God!” Buffy said. “Spike, is that really you? Flap your wings twice if this is you.”

The dragon flapped its wings twice.

Buffy moved closer, ignoring Angel’s alarmed yells, and asked, “Do you know if there’s a way to turn you back?” She pressed her hands to either side of the dragon’s wings, biting her lip. In an instant the dragon had shrunk down and turned to Spike’s familiar form, wearing ragged clothing, hair bleached blonde but without any gel, and looking completely bewildered. Her hands were now on his face.

“Oh thank God,” Buffy said, and with one hand on his face and the other arm wrapping around his neck, kissed him for dear life. Spike kissed her back, one hand clenching tightly on her waist, and her sword clanged to the ground.

“What are you doing!” Angel squawked.

Buffy ignored him, moaning into Spike’s mouth and feeling him smile against hers.

“Hello?” Angel was saying feebly. “Could someone please untie me?”

She broke free despite Spike’s protests, picked up her sword, and went over to untie Angel.

“There you go,” Buffy said. “Uh, go forth and. Be free.”

“Thank you,” Angel said dutifully, rubbing his wrists. “Since you’ve saved me I feel obliged to warn you that you seem to be in love with a monster.”

“Monster and a man,” Buffy said. “I’m aware. Well, off you go.”

With a last wary look at her and Spike, Angel set off down the grassy meadow. Buffy moved back to Spike, taking both of his arms and swinging them back and forth.

“I’m pretty sure this is the weirdest world we’ve been in,” she said.

Spike shrugged, stroking her shoulder. “Has its appeal. Nice horse.”

“Yeah, I got a horse and _you_ got turned into a dragon,” Buffy said. “Any explanations?”

“None, actually,” Spike said, looking down at his clothes, puzzled. “Came to as a dragon with my prat of a grandsire as a damsel-in-distress. Does seem fitting that I’m a kidnapping dragon and you’re a knight.”

 _I wanted to be a knight,_ she heard him saying.

He didn’t look like he remembered, just seemed fond and at peace despite the fact that he’d just been a dragon and was trapped in a series of alternate universes.

Buffy took off her helmet and put it on his head.

“What are you doing?”

Buffy tilted her chin up, stubborn, and started taking off her armor. She was wearing some sort of tunic and tights underneath, which was probably for the best since if any of the others managed to find them, her stripping wouldn’t be the best idea.

“Buffy,” Spike said, “is this because – I really don’t care. Was never my destiny to be a knight. It was yours.”

Buffy shoved her armor in his hands, watching him curse and struggle to catch it all, and crossed her arms.

“You and me aren’t much for destinies,” she said. “We choose our own paths. You always have. So come on. Be a knight.”

Spike looked at her, eyes crinkling and mouth turning up at the corners.

“Not like those Byzantium freaks, though,” Buffy added.

“Nah, they were losers,” Spike agreed.

Buffy paused. “Also, that armor’s pretty heavy. I’m good with my sword.” And she twirled it around for emphasis. “And my horse.” She’d really miss Twinkle Feet in the next universe.

Spike gave a huff of laughter and said, “Alright.”

He’d just finished putting on the armor when a pile of dust on the ground rose up to form –

“Dracula?” Buffy said, staring.

She’d _known_ this mansion had looked familiar. It was the one Dracula had used when he’d come to Sunnydale three years ago.

Dracula raised his arms up, robes flaring melodramatically. “You, vile knight, have broken my curse. I found the soul of a gentle prince and corrupted him to my own needs. You have freed him, and now you shall pay the price.”

“Oi, I bloody well do not have the soul of a gentle prince,” Spike objected, sounding outraged.

Buffy sighed. “Tell me I don’t have to kill him _again_?” Dracula lunged for her and she jumped back, slashing her sword in a sharp line. “Guess that’s a no.”

“Has he got any money?” Spike said. “Owes me eleven pounds.”

“Shut up and look for something wooden!” said Buffy, but couldn’t put any amount of irritation in her voice as she did a cartwheel to avoid Dracula’s sudden appearance at her right. He was still a fan of his dumb fancy effects, which was annoying. She couldn’t believe she’d ever fallen for this schtick. But it was enough of a challenge that she was enjoying herself, and Spike was enjoying watching her fight, smirking and hitching up that eyebrow at her while he searched for wooden objects. “Is he even a vampire in this world?” Buffy called over to him.

“Just go with decapacitation, it’s always a winner!” Spike yelled, and leaped behind Dracula, pulling him back to punch him repeatedly in the face so that he was stumbling around woozily. “That’s – for – my – money, you _wanker,_ ” Spike said, and delivered a kick to Dracula’s groin that made him lean over in pain.

Spike pushed him over to Buffy, whistling, and said, “All yours, love.”

“You can never defeat me,” Dracula croaked, one hand clutched to his groin. “No matter how hard you try – ”

“Maybe you’re not sharp enough to get the fact that you are _lame_ through your tiny brain,” Buffy said, “but this is!”

She swung her sword through Dracula’s neck and watched him dissipate in a cloud of dust with a feeling of satisfaction. Then she leaped into Spike’s arms and kissed him fiercely, wrapping her legs around him and rubbing against him agonizingly slowly.

“Fuck,” Spike said eloquently, his hands falling down to clutch at her legs and his mouth kissing her pulse.

“Mm,” Buffy said, while he was pushing aside the rough fabric of her tunic and pressing soft little kisses to her throat. “Oh, God, oh – Willow!”

“Excuse me?” Spike mumbled into her collarbone. “Somethin’ I should know about here? Do I need to change up my look?”

“No, I mean, Willow,” Buffy said, a bit chagrined. She pulled up the corner of her tunic. “Right there. With Xander and Faith.”

She slid reluctantly off Spike, ignoring his growl, and brushed off her clothes. Willow, eyes averted, waved at her, wearing a velvet purple dress that looked like it belonged on the cover of Ren Faire Magazine. Though, really, she wasn’t one to talk. Xander had his head buried in Willow’s shoulder, wearing a loose shirt and pants. Faith was standing on Willow’s other side, wearing a half-dismantled knight’s armor and carrying a matching sword to Buffy’s.

“It’s okay, Xander, you can look now,” Willow said, and Xander lifted his head back up.

“So, Wil,” Buffy said. “I’m guessing you’re a witch in this rompy Sleeping Beauty adventure.”

“With a pointy hat and everything.” Willow looked disgruntled. “ _Stereotypes._ Faith – ” She was blushing. “Lived in my cottage. We heard about a knight called Summers coming to the castle in the village and thought we should check on you. And _wow_ , I never thought I would say that.”

“And Harris?” asked Spike, lifting an eyebrow. “Lived in the village?”

“As a shoemaker,” Xander grumbled. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, laugh it up. I was respected by the whole village, buddy. What’re you supposed to be?”

“Prince cursed to be a dragon,” Buffy said, waving him off. “We dealt with it.”

“Right,” Willow said. “Uh, Buffy…”

Without pause Buffy threw her sword in a perfect arc to slice off Dracula’s head again before he’d had a chance to appear at her shoulder. Spike tossed the sword back to her and she caught it, sheathing it in her scabbard.

“Like I said,” Buffy went on, nonchalant. “Dealt with it.”

“Great,” said Willow. “Guess we’d better, you know.”

“Ah, yes,” Xander said. “Maybe twentieth time will be the charm.”

“Nine, I think,” Willow said. “We seem like we’re jumping to completely random worlds, so. We’ll have to get home eventually.”

“Eventually being the operative word there,” Buffy said, and walked over to give Twinkle Feet a pat goodbye before returning to the others. “Alright. Petal us, Wil.”

Faith took the now-diminished rose out of Willow’s hair, picked out a black petal, and handed it to her; Willow said, “ _Incendere,_ ” and it went up in flames.

**V.**

Buffy’s eyes flew open.

Faith and Spike’s hands were in her own, a grey thread was wrapped around her ring finger, and the lights from above were shining blindingly down on her head. Willow and Xander in front of her, a weight against her back that felt like a sword, and a chilling emptiness in the hotel lobby.

The others reflected her own disbelief and unsettlement back at her, all of their hands still connecting them to each other.

Xander looked around, wide-eyed, _one_ -eyed, unlike all the other worlds. “Is this really – ”

“Only one way to find out,” Buffy said, standing up and pulling Spike and Faith up with her, who pulled Xander and Willow up. After so long as a unit, it felt strange when they all let go, shaking out their sweaty hands. Spike, of course, didn’t need to. He just reached into his duster pocket, curling his fingers around what was probably his lighter, and curling his other hand around Buffy’s.

The weight on her back was a sword, the sword from that fairytale world, and Faith had hers sheathed to her side as well. Maybe Buffy could’ve brought Twinkle Feet, too, if she’d only been riding on him when Willow had burned the petal. Oh well. There were better things to be riding.

The pentagram, line of purple sand, and the rest of their candles from the spell were all still in place. The lobby was devoid of any presence, quieter without the Spikes and Cordelias, and with everyone else seemingly absent. Buffy’s heart raced, hoping Dawn was still here and alright.

Voices echoed from Angel’s office, so the five of them exchanged looks and rushed over there.

“I’ve told you everything I know,” croaked a man’s voice.

Buffy rounded the corner and found Ethan Rayne tied to a chair, bloodied and bruised. Angel, Cordelia, Wesley, Fred, and Gunn were standing in a circle around him, unimpressed. Lorne was in a corner with, thank God, Dawn.

“They’re back, see,” Ethan said desperately, and everyone turned to see Buffy and the others.

“Buffy!” Dawn said, immediately running over to her and wrapping her arms around Buffy’s middle. “You were all just frozen and wouldn’t move, and we couldn’t wake you up at all, no matter what we tried – ”

“We’re okay now,” Buffy said, squeezing Dawn tight and pressing a kiss to her hair. “I’m so sorry Dawn, I had no idea. You’re okay too? Nothing’s wrong? How long were we gone?”

“I’m fine,” Dawn assured her, but her voice was wavering. Buffy couldn’t imagine how tough it must have been for her to have all her family disappear in one swoop, and she stroked Dawn’s hair again. “You were only gone a day. Where were you guys?”

“We had kind of an adventure,” Buffy said, looking at Ethan Rayne coolly. “Tell you about it if you tell me about yours.”

“I miss all the good stuff,” Dawn said. She shook her head and pulled away. She saw Willow and Xander, shoulders relaxing, and then saw Spike, his hand still attached to Buffy’s.

She narrowed her eyes. Spike drew his hand away and Buffy tensed.

Dawn threw herself at Spike in a hug, eyes bright with tears, holding on to him for dear life. Spike stared down, shocked. He wrapped his arms around Dawn tentatively, brushing her hair and tucking his head down to her shoulder. They stayed like that for a few moments, breathing in tandem even though Spike didn’t need to breathe. Buffy felt herself settling down watching them, the corners of her mouth twitching. This was right, the way Spike and Dawn were meant to be, her two favorite people.

“Starting to feel a little neglected over here,” Xander said pointedly.

Dawn snorted, and let go to hug Xander and Willow, and even Faith briefly, to the latter’s immense surprise.

“Good to have you back, guys,” Cordelia said. “You can fill us in later. We’ve found our culprit.”

“When you guys sort of like, dissociated or whatever,” Dawn said, “Wes and Fred were trying all this magic, science stuff, but it wasn’t helping. We weren’t sure if touching you could make things worse. So we thought we should track down whoever sent that package, since things were too _chaotic_ – ha, get it, because Ethan Rayne’s a – okay, yeah – things were too chaotic before. I helped Harmony track down the address online, and Angel and Gunn brought _him_ back.”

“Ethan Rayne,” Buffy said dryly, raising her eyebrows. “Back again. Aren’t you meant to be in supernatural Initiative prison?”

“A chaos mage would definitely be a big fan of Spikes-plus-Cordelias-fest,” Willow acknowledged, “but why would you – ”

“The package was meant for Angel, not them,” Fred said.

“Wolfram & Hart broke him out of prison,” Wesley explained, “and hired him in order to perform this feat of magic, which would release several alternate universe Angels.”

“And at least one of them would probably be lacking a soul,” Buffy said, chilled. She looked at Angel. “You _work_ with these people?”

“Trust me,” Angel said darkly, “we’ll be having a conversation about this.”

“And if not an Angel without a soul, perhaps an Angel more amenable to one of their plans,” Wesley went on. “You see the ingeniousness of it – they did not expect us to come to you for help, nor for you to agree to help us. If we had gone to them, the current outcome would be very different.”

“Spike and Cordelia foiled that plan,” said Gunn, grinning.

“Through sheer stupidity,” Cordelia confirmed. “Go us.”

“Cheers,” Spike said, tipping an invisible hat at her sarcastically.

“Well, you do seem to know everything,” Ethan said. “Perhaps you could let me go now – ”

Everyone fixed him with identical, unimpressed looks. But part of Buffy wanted to thank him – for letting her glimpse parts of Spike she had forgotten or never acknowledged, for allowing her a chance to accept something about herself, for that dance and sunrise with Spike, the two of them and their laughter in that first world.

In the end, she didn’t punch him, figuring that was thanks enough.

▬▬▬▬▬▬

Spike was meandering through his goodbyes to the L.A. crew, overcompensating for his own emotion about leaving by cracking jokes about Angel’s face. Buffy watched him, perched on the sofa next to Willow and Xander, and felt perfectly content.

“Spike’s coming back with us, isn’t he,” Xander said, resigned.

“Yup. Better get used to it,” Buffy said.

Xander absently fiddled with the finger that had once held his engagement ring. “I know he saved the world and all, and you’re, you know, with him – ”

“You know,” Willow echoed dubiously.

“Yeah,” Xander said. “I’m trying, Buff, I am. I just don’t see how it’s fair that he gets to come back, and Ahn – ” His voice broke.

“No one said it was fair,” Buffy said, careful. “It’s not his fault either. But I’m sorry, Xand, and Willow, you too, that you both had to see them again.”

Xander shook his head. “I’m glad. I told those versions of Ahn – I told her I’d never been happier in my life than I was with her. Told her I couldn’t wait to be married to her. Least we’re not doomed in every universe.”

“I’m glad too,” Willow said, looking pensive, her hand on her heart. “To see her one last time. Even if it hurt, so much. It's always going to hurt. But I think, after we get back, I might head to Cleveland.”

Buffy raised her eyebrows. “Any particular reason?”

“Oh, you know,” Willow said. She cast a significant glance at Faith, who was talking to Dawn and guarding a tied-up Ethan Rayne, who would be heading to the Watchers’ Council with them.

“ _Oh_ ,” Buffy said, raising both her eyebrows.

“I mean, I haven’t got the upper moral ground anymore,” Willow said, red-faced, “and since Kennedy and I broke up, it’s been awkward at the Slayerette Headquarters, and I could do some good there, and there's been some sparkage, and she’s – I like her.”

“Ah,” Buffy said, grinning, and gave Willow a look that said _we will be absolutely be discussing these details later_. Xander looked between both of them, lost. While he was trying to get Willow to spill, Buffy turned her attention back to Spike.

“Tell Harm I said bye, yeah?” Spike was saying.

Fred’s lip was wobbling. “She’ll be really upset you didn’t tell her in person, Spike.”

“I’m comin’ back to visit, aren’t I?” Spike said indignantly, not looking directly at Fred’s upset face. “Promise.”

“I think I’ll actually miss you,” Cordelia remarked.

“Miss you too, cheerleader,” Spike said, rolling his eyes. “Keep ol’ Peaches in hand, alright?”

“Oh, you know me,” Cordelia said, reaching out to hug him tightly. “I’ve got it under control.”

“Yeah you do,” Spike said, grinning. He turned to Gunn and Lorne. “Charlie, Lorne. You ever think that band idea could be a possibility, you let me know. Worked out pretty well for us in that other universe.”

“Yeah, okay,” Gunn said, sounding suspiciously sniffly.

“You and your girl live a good life,” Lorne said, “and if you ever want to sing for me again – well, honestly, don’t. There is such a thing as too much emotion. The _pain_ – ”

“You _asked_ ,” Spike said, affronted, moving on to Wesley and giving him a manly clap on the shoulder, until there was only Angel left.

They stared each other down warily.

“Don’t waste away without me,” said Spike finally.

“Don’t get yourself killed without me,” Angel retorted, gruffly.

Buffy hid her smile when Spike finally moved away with a mock salute and headed over to her. Willow took this as her cue to drag Xander away with some terrible excuse.

Spike flopped down next to Buffy, their thighs touching, and Buffy lifted herself up to sit in his lap, squirming around till she was comfortable and ignoring his faint growl. She reached out one hand to touch his hair, moving her fingers around the gelled curls and trying to ignore his frankly pornographic moans.

“You know, if you want to stay in L.A.,” she started, hesitant, “you could – ”

“Been here long enough,” Spike cut her off. “Missed you for all of it.”

“Oh,” Buffy said.

“Besides,” said Spike, taking her hand out of his hair and kissing the back of it tenderly, “we’ve got some catching up to do.”

▬▬▬▬▬▬

“That’s the last of it, I think,” Buffy said, setting the box marked _Spike - Weapons (5)_ down on the floor next to the box marked _Buffy - Weapons (6)_.

She leaned back into Spike’s solid chest behind her, his hands curling around her hands on her stomach. They both surveyed their new bedroom. Bay windows but thick curtains, fairly sturdy bed (they’d tested it earlier), a bookshelf for Spike’s new records and books, and a dark-wood cabinet for all their weapons, with their boxes waiting to be unpacked on the floor beneath them.

Dawn had picked out the cottage, with more of a head for pragmatics and home decor than either of the two of them, a few months after Spike had come back to London with them. The best thing about it in Buffy's opinion was the back porch, two steps leading down, the perfect space for both of them to sit, and a table for Dawn to read outside. There were three bedrooms, one for her and Spike, one for Dawn, and an extra one for any Scoobies that came to stay over. It was close to her university, to the skating rink, and to Slayer Central, which was slowly being converted into one of two schools for new Slayers. (Buffy was pretty sure Giles was working up his nerve to ask Spike to be a teacher there, though her latest retelling of Victorian Giles’s opinion of Spike – which had gotten even longer and more detailed – had probably set that process back for a couple of days.)

“Not exactly very homey yet,” Spike said, playing with her fingers, lingering on the one wearing one of his rings with William’s thread wrapped around it.

“That’s okay.” Buffy tilted her head back and smiled at him. “We’ll make it a home.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! i'm @bisexualhaz on tumblr if you want to talk, and comments and kudos are really appreciated! hope you're all staying safe <3  
> spike quotes la belle dame sans merci by keats and the tyger by william blake. some lines are quoted from 2.03 school hard, 6.03 after life, 5.01 buffy vs. dracula, 5.07 fool for love, 3.08 lovers walk, 7.22 chosen, 7.02 beneath you, 5.14 crush, 7.21 end of days, and 2.22 becoming.  
> in case anyone’s curious: randy is inspired by the absolutely brilliant and incredible second string by solstice, and so is xander’s husband. chase is from a world where she takes buffy’s place as slayer in the show, and spike absolutely could have fallen in love with her, but she wouldn’t have fallen back. delia doesn’t have much of a backstory except for being turned by darla in the pilot, and then eventually managing to survive and join angel, spike, and drusilla. the cordy in love with buffy got to go to uc sunnydale and took riley’s place as buffy’s s4 love interest. the spike who got his soul back to prove something to buffy is a spike who went to get his soul post-dead things, and one day i will finally write that fic because it lives in my head rent-free. the world where faith is in smashed is one where she came to sunnydale after buffy’s death to take over as slayer. and because the band au is very special to my heart, buffy and spike's band definitely covered you shook me all night by ac/dc.  
> 


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